President Trump said Thursday he was “surprised” that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would not be appearing before a joint panel led by congressional Republicans for an interview that was tentatively planned to take place Thursday.
“Actually I was surprised at that,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News. “He mentioned certain things to me that, you know, are very positive about that event, and I would imagine that you’d want to put that down.”
Rosenstein was slated to meet with lawmakers from the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees this week, during which he was expected to face questions about recent press reports that Rosenstein suggested secretly recording Trump and discussed urging members of the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
The deputy attorney general denied considering such actions, which stoked concerns Trump would fire Rosenstein.
[More: Trump announces decision on firing Rosenstein: ‘No’]
Lawmakers were also expected to probe Rosenstein about the Justice Department’s conduct surrounding the 2016 election, which the committees are investigating.
But Rosenstein’s meeting with lawmakers, including some of the president’s key allies in Congress, was postponed indefinitely.
Trump told Fox News that he doesn’t believe Rosenstein would’ve told the panel anything damaging if the interview were to move forward.
“Frankly, whether you were under oath or not shouldn’t matter, but he mentioned things to me that I think would be fine for him to testify, you know, when Congress calls,” the president said. “So I’m a little surprised that Rod wouldn’t do it. We have a good relationship with Rod because we work on a lot of other things.”
