Axios reported Monday morning that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “has verbally offered to resign to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, according to a source close to Rosenstein, but as of now, it’s unclear whether his resignation has been accepted.”
Well, that set off a cable news frenzy, so I hear. Headlines blared that Rosenstein had been summoned to the White House where he ws expected to resign or be fired. Rosenstein was filmed arriving and departing the White House.
It now appears that all the excitement was a bit premature: Rosenstein will meet with Donald Trump on Thursday to discuss his future at DOJ.
This all has to do with a New York Times report from Friday, citing sources who were not participants in the room at the time of the conversations reported. Rod Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment:
The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.
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Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes in interviews over the past several months, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.
The Washington Post, which cites participants who were in the room for the conversations says the remark was sarcastic. NBC News also had a competing account, which includes Rosenstein “joking when he discussed wearing a wire.”