/mlpol/ - Rosenstein faces congressional confrontation amid new claim he seriously suggested wiretapping Trump

>Soon after Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein suggested using a wiretap to record President Trump’s communications, then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe went to the bureau’s top lawyer seeking advice on what he had just heard.
>Rosenstein, McCabe told the lawyer, wanted to furtively record the president to help explore whether Trump had obstructed justice. How, McCabe asked, should the FBI respond to the outlandish proposition?
>The lawyer, James Baker, dismissed the idea, according to people familiar with the episode who described it to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. But importantly, Baker told congressional investigators last week that the deputy attorney general’s suggestion was presented to him by senior FBI officials as being serious — raising questions about Rosenstein’s assertions to the contrary, the people said.

>This week, Rosenstein is scheduled to talk to congressional investigators about the 2017 episode, which nearly cost him his job after it was revealed in news accounts last month. The high-stakes interview with some of the president’s closest Republican allies could again put the deputy attorney general in the hot seat, especially if those lawmakers leave the interview unconvinced of Rosenstein’s testimony and relay their concerns to the president.

>Baker was not at the controversial meeting where Rosenstein broached the idea of a wiretap; his account to Congress, first reported by the Hill and Fox News, reflected what was relayed to him by other FBI officials with direct knowledge of the discussion.
>According to Democratic aides familiar with Baker’s testimony last week, Baker could not recall which senior FBI official — McCabe or lawyer Lisa Page, who was at the Rosenstein meeting — recounted the substance of what was said to him. One of the aides said that while Baker characterized Rosenstein’s concern as “very serious,” it did not appear that Baker thought Rosenstein’s proposal was “an official one.”
>According to a second Democratic aide, Baker said the proposal to wear a wire was dismissed by senior FBI and Justice Department officials “within a couple of days.”

>McCabe memorialized the conversation in a memo, which also alleged that Rosenstein suggested using a constitutional amendment to try to remove Trump from office. The former acting FBI director has told people that Rosenstein suggested using a wiretap on multiple occasions. McCabe’s account of the proposed wiretap is supported by Page and notes she kept. Another person at the meeting, though, has said he did not take Rosenstein to be making a serious suggestion.

>In the Trump administration, though, no one is ever truly ensconced in their job. Only weeks ago, Rosenstein traveled to the White House fully expecting to be fired over a New York Times report that, per McCabe’s account in his memos, he had proposed using a wiretap against Trump or ousting him using a constitutional amendment. So real was his belief that he would soon be fired that the Justice Department prepared a succession plan — only to scrap it just hours later so Rosenstein and the president could sit down face to face and discuss what had occurred.
>Trump later postponed that meeting as controversy surrounded his Supreme Court nominee, and Justice Department officials came to believe that the crisis had passed.
>On Air Force One on Monday, Rosenstein finally made the case to the president that McCabe was wrong to assert he had ever pursued a wiretap or had discussed using a congressional amendment to remove Trump from office.
>Trump said after the meeting that he had no plans to remove Rosenstein from his post and that he expected Mueller to treat him “very fairly.”

>Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, said in an interview with The Post that Rosenstein told Trump that his comment about wiretapping was sarcastic, and that the president never believed that the deputy attorney general had pondered using a constitutional amendment to remove him from office. Giuliani said the president sees the deputy attorney general more than he does Sessions — Rosenstein, for example, attended the installation of new Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, while Sessions did not — and sees no reason to make immediate personnel moves at the Justice Department.

http://archive.is/p2dpB

>House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) on Thursday called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to resign "immediately."

>“I think at this particular point, Rod Rosenstein’s priorities are misplaced. His unwillingness to come before Congress and allow us to conduct proper congressional oversight, along with the other information that we’ve learned over the last week or so, would indicate that Rosenstein has not displayed the candor of which would support one’s theory of actually believing that he has been open and honest in all regards," Meadows told reporters.

>"So with that, I think that it’s time that Rod Rosenstein steps down. He should do so immediately and in doing that, I think it would serve the country well, it would serve this president well," he added.
…
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/412077-meadows-calls-on-rosenstein-to-resign-immediately

/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

Archived thread