Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggested in 2017 that he should make covert audio recordings of President Trump in order to build a case for removing him from office.
After news of this broke in the New York Times today, a Justice Department official, who was reportedly in the room when Rosenstein talked about using the 25th Amendment to end the Trump presidency, says he was being sarcastic.
That’s a heck of a joke coming from a humorless guy.
The 25th Amendment allows for a majority of the president’s cabinet, or “such other body as Congress may by law provide,” to decide if an Oval Office occupant is unable to carry out his duties – and then to put it to a full congressional vote.
The allegation, based on unnamed sources, stems from a period of time when the White House seemed to ratchet up its chaos level with each day.
Trump had just fired his FBI director, James Comey, and was pilloried in the press for sharing Israeli intelligence about the ISIS terror army with Russian emissaries in the Oval Office.
And Rosenstein, the Times reports, thought the president had turned him into a patsy by leaning heavily on a memo he wrote when he swung the axe at Comey.
As a result, Rosenstein began recruiting Cabinet members to execute on a future 25th Amendment plan and suggesting that FBi officials who were on Trump’s short list to replace Comey could make clandestine tapes of their job interviews with Trump.
Rosenstein said Friday in a statement to reporters: ‘The New York Times’s story is 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. 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 Times is standing by its story.