President Trump said Monday he would use a Thursday meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to figure out “what’s going on,” amid reports that the Justice Department’s No. 2 offered to resign after a report said he tried to oust Trump.
“We’ll be determining what’s going on. We want to have transparency, we want to have openness, and I look forward to meeting with Rod at that time,” Trump said, noting that the two talked briefly on Monday.
The White House said Monday that the two would meet about “recent news stories” following a request to do so by Rosenstein.
“Because the president is at the United Nations General Assembly and has a full schedule with leaders from around the world, they will meet on Thursday when the president returns to Washington, D.C.,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
The Thursday meeting will get at last week’s report in the New York Times that said Rosenstein considered wearing a wire to record his conversations with Trump, and mulled how to organize Cabinet members to oust Trump under the 25th Amendment. Rosenstein rejected those claims, and another source said Rosenstein once joked about wearing a wire in a meeting with Trump.
Monday morning, reports surfaced that Rosenstein either resigned his office, or was expecting to be fired later in the day. But a source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner Monday that Rosenstein hasn’t offered Kelly his resignation and only discussed it after last week’s story.
Rosenstein returned to the Justice Department around 1 p.m. Monday afternoon following a previously scheduled meeting, and remained the Justice Department’s No. 2.
Rosenstein pushed back against the Times’ story Friday, calling the report “absolutely false.”
“I never pursued or authorized recording the President and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false,” Rosenstein said.
Rosenstein and the president have had a contentious relationship, with the deputy attorney general catching the ire of the president for his overseeing of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. But lately, Trump has said he has a good working relationship with Rosenstein.
Aides have repeatedly warned the president about the optics and likely fallout from firing Rosenstein.
