With all of Washington riveted by the Judiciary Committee testimony of Christine Blasey Ford Thursday morning, the White House announced it will delay the day’s other big explosive news item: the president’s meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whose job has seemingly come into increased jeopardy since it was reported he once speculated that the president was unfit for office and talked, potentially in jest, about secretly recording meetings with him.
“The President spoke with Rod Rosenstein a few minutes ago, and they plan to meet next week,” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. “They do not want to do anything to interfere with the hearing.”
The Friday New York Times report that threw Rosenstein’s job into jeopardy alleged that Rosenstein suggested secretly recording the president in the spring of 2017 in order “expose the chaos consuming the administration.” Rosenstein denied the allegations, calling the story “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”
“I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda,” Rosenstein said in a statement to the Times. “But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th amendment.”
The report sparked a weekend of confusion among reporters that came to a head Monday, when various outlets reported almost concurrently that Rosenstein was about to resign, was about to be fired, and was to remain in his job. Axios later reported that Rosenstein had offered to resign, and that the Justice Department had even drafted an exit statement for him, but that circumstances somehow changed Monday morning.
Thursday’s announcement of the delay comes one day after President Trump told reporters he hopes to work things out with Rosenstein and keep him in his job.
“I would certainly prefer not” to fire him, Trump said during a Thursday news conference at the United Nations in New York. “We’ve had a good talk. He says he never did it, he doesn’t believe it, he gets a lot of respect from me. He’s very nice, and we’ll see.”
