Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein didn’t want to get fired by tweet.
Last fall the New York Times reported Rosenstein told Justice Department officials about wearing a “wire” to record conversations with President Trump and that he had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment against the president to remove him from office in the days after former FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017.
In the ensuing fallout, Rosenstein was called into a meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly. He defended his Justice Department career, but also said he was willing to resign.
“I can go. I’m ready to go. I can resign. But I don’t want to go out with a tweet,” Rosenstein said, according to a Washington Post report on Friday. Trump has routinely announced personnel changes, including firings, on Twitter. One source said Rosenstein was in tears, although another disputed that account. He also did not discuss the specifics of the “wire” report, although Rosenstein and the Justice Department have disputed that it was ever a serious consideration.
In a call with the president that followed, Rosenstein mentioned special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “I give the investigation credibility,” Rosenstein said. “I can land the plane.”
Rosenstein, who was overseeing Mueller’s efforts, assured Trump he was not a “target” of the investigation, although the president’s conduct was heavily scrutinized, and agreed that he was being treated unfairly, which one source said was likely a reference to an onslaught of media coverage.
With his ouster appearing to be imminent, the Justice Department even drew up a succession plan, but after Rosenstein met with the president on Air Force One a few weeks later his status was secured.
“The only commitment I made to President Trump about the Russia investigation is the same commitment I made to the Congress: so long as I was in charge, it would be conducted appropriately and as expeditiously as possible. Everyone who actually participated in the investigation knows that,” Rosenstein said in a lengthy statement in response to the report. “My relationship with the President is not one-dimensional. The Russia investigation represents only a fraction of my work and the work of the Department of Justice. I talk with the President at every opportunity about the great progress we have made and are making at the Department of Justice in achieving the Administration’s law enforcement priorities and protecting American citizens.”
The bombshell report from the Post comes a little more than a week after the Justice Department released a redacted version of Mueller’s report. Rosenstein has come out on the offensive in recent days.
As Attorney General William Barr faced backlash for a summary of the report that critics said misportrayed Mueller’s findings, Rosenstein wrote a profile of his boss in Time’s 2019 list of 100 most influential people, saying the “the rule of law is secure” with Barr at the Justice Department.
He then stood with Barr last week during a news conference before the release of Mueller’s report, which also elicited backlash from detractors who saw it as a ploy to spin the special counsel’s findings. Rosenstein punched back at critics and the media, and also former President Barack Obama, at a speech on Thursday.
Mueller’s report said Trump’s campaign had “numerous links” to the Russians but “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.” The special counsel also described several instances of possible obstruction of justice but did not make a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed the investigation. Barr and Rosenstein instead made the conclusion, determining the president did not obstruct justice.
Rosenstein is expected to depart the Justice Department soon, although his exit has been delayed, and his chosen replacement Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen faces the Senate confirmation process.
