Trump Shouldn’t Have Time for Rosenstein Week
As the administration lurches from crisis to crisis, essential tasks of governing are being neglected.
Rosenstein’s quick trip to the White House.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
On Monday, White House aides said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had offered to resign. Then came word from unnamed Justice Department officials that he was not resigning but expected to be fired. Then we heard he was heading to the White House. And then … nothing. At least for now. Rosenstein spoke to President Donald Trump on the phone, and will meet with him on Thursday. Will he quit? Get fired? Who knows?
All this matters because Rosenstein is overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the president and Russia. Removing him might be a prelude to an attempt by the president to shut down the probe, which would clearly be a major crisis. But the talk of Rosenstein’s departure doesn’t seem to be directly tied to the Mueller operation. Instead, it appears to stem from a New York Times story last week that Rosenstein once talked about taping the president and even invoking the 25th amendment. Or at least, that’s what the White House says. Yet Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s lawyers, implied Monday that if Rosenstein is ousted there should be a “time out on this inquiry.” Which suggests that the Times story — which may have been based on White House leaks to begin with, and has been denied by Rosenstein and challenged by other reporting — may just have been a pretext to get rid of the deputy attorney general anyway.