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Rosenstein Suggested He Secretly Record Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment Login/Join 
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted
NYT

WASHINGTON — 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.

Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.

Mr. Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Mr. Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Mr. Rosenstein was caught off guard when Mr. Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.

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, 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.

None of Mr. Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition. It is not clear how determined he was about seeing them through, though he did tell Mr. McCabe that he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.

The extreme suggestions show Mr. Rosenstein’s state of mind in the disorienting days that followed Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Sitting in on Mr. Trump’s interviews with prospective F.B.I. directors and facing attacks for his own role in Mr. Comey’s firing, Mr. Rosenstein had an up-close view of the tumult. Mr. Rosenstein appeared conflicted, regretful and emotional, according to people who spoke with him at the time.

Mr. Rosenstein disputed this account.

“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he said in a statement. “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.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.

Mr. Rosenstein acknowledged that Mr. Comey was a role model but said he thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader for the F.B.I.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
But according to the others who described his comments, Mr. Rosenstein not only confirmed that he was serious about the idea but also followed up by suggesting that other F.B.I. officials who were interviewing to be the bureau’s director could also secretly record Mr. Trump.

Mr. McCabe, who was later fired from the F.B.I., declined to comment. His memos have been turned over to the special counsel investigating whether Trump associates conspired with Russia’s election interference, Robert S. Mueller III, according to a lawyer for Mr. McCabe. “A set of those memos remained at the F.B.I. at the time of his departure in late January 2018,” the lawyer, Michael R. Bromwich, said of his client. “He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos.”

The revelations about Mr. Rosenstein come as Mr. Trump has unleashed another round of attacks in recent days on federal law enforcement, saying in an interview with the Hill newspaper that he hopes his assaults on the F.B.I. turn out to be “one of my crowning achievements” and that he only wished he had terminated Mr. Comey sooner.

“If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Mr. Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention. Say, ‘I don’t want that guy.’ Or at least fired him the first day on the job.”

Days after ascending to the role of the nation’s No. 2 law enforcement officer, Mr. Rosenstein was thrust into a crisis.

On a brisk May day, Mr. Rosenstein and his boss, Mr. Sessions, joined Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, where the president informed them of his plan to oust Mr. Comey. To the surprise of White House aides who were trying to talk the president out of it, Mr. Rosenstein embraced the idea, even offering to write the memo about the Clinton email inquiry. He turned it in shortly after.

A day later, Mr. Trump announced the firing, and White House aides released Mr. Rosenstein’s memo, labeling it the basis for Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Democrats sharply criticized Mr. Rosenstein, accusing him of helping to create a cover story for the president to rationalize the termination.

“You wrote a memo you knew would be used to perpetuate a lie,” Senator Christopher Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote on Twitter. "You own this debacle.”

The president’s reliance on his memo caught Mr. Rosenstein by surprise, and he became angry at Mr. Trump, according to people who spoke to Mr. Rosenstein at the time. He grew concerned that his reputation had suffered harm and wondered whether Mr. Trump had motives beyond Mr. Comey’s treatment of Mrs. Clinton for ousting him, the people said.

During their discussion, Mr. Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Mr. Trump had conducted the search for a new F.B.I. director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including Mr. McCabe, were under consideration.

To Mr. Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Rosenstein then raised the idea of wearing a recording device or “wire,” as he put it, to secretly tape the president when he visited the White House. One participant asked whether Mr. Rosenstein was serious, and he replied animatedly that he was.

If not him, then Mr. McCabe or other F.B.I. officials interviewing with Mr. Trump for the job could perhaps wear a wire or otherwise record the president, Mr. Rosenstein offered. White House officials never checked his phone when he arrived for meetings there, Mr. Rosenstein added, implying it would be easy to secretly record Mr. Trump.

The suggestion itself was remarkable. While informants or undercover agents regularly use concealed listening devices to surreptitiously gather evidence for federal investigators, they are typically targeting drug kingpins and Mafia bosses in criminal investigations, not a president viewed as ineffectively conducting his duties.

In the end, the idea went nowhere, the officials said. But they called Mr. Rosenstein’s comments an example of how erratically he was behaving while he was taking part in the interviews for a replacement F.B.I. director, considering the appointment of a special counsel and otherwise running the day-to-day operations of the more than 100,000 people at the Justice Department.

Mr. Rosenstein’s suggestion about the 25th Amendment was similarly a sensitive topic. The amendment allows for the vice president and majority of cabinet officials to declare the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Merely conducting a straw poll, even if Mr. Kelly and Mr. Sessions were on board, would be risky if another administration official were to tell the president, who could fire everyone involved to end the effort.

Mr. McCabe told other F.B.I. officials of his conversation with Mr. Rosenstein. None of the people interviewed said that they knew of him ever consulting Mr. Kelly or Mr. Sessions.

The episode is the first known instance of a named senior administration official weighing the 25th Amendment. Unidentified others have been said to discuss it, including an unnamed senior administration official who wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times. That person’s identity is unknown to journalists in the Times news department.

Some of the details in Mr. McCabe’s memos suggested that Mr. Rosenstein had regrets about the firing of Mr. Comey. During a May 12 meeting with Mr. McCabe, Mr. Rosenstein was upset and emotional, Mr. McCabe wrote, and said that he wished Mr. Comey were still at the F.B.I. so he could bounce ideas off him.

Mr. Rosenstein also asked F.B.I. officials on May 14, five days after Mr. Comey’s firing, about calling him for advice about a special counsel. The officials responded that such a call was a bad idea because Mr. Comey was no longer in the government. And they were surprised, believing that the idea contradicted Mr. Rosenstein’s stated reason for backing Mr. Comey’s dismissal — that he had shown bad judgment in the Clinton email inquiry.

Mr. Rosenstein, 53, is a lifelong public servant. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal judge before joining the Justice Department in 1990 and was appointed United States attorney for Maryland.

Mr. Rosenstein also considered appointing as special counsel James M. Cole, himself a former deputy attorney general, three of the people said. Mr. Cole would have made an even richer target for Mr. Trump’s ire than has Mr. Mueller, a lifelong Republican: Mr. Cole served four years as the No. 2 in the Justice Department during the Obama administration and worked as a private lawyer representing one of Mrs. Clinton’s longtime confidants, Sidney Blumenthal.

Mr. Cole and Mr. Rosenstein have known each for years. Mr. Cole, who declined to comment, was Mr. Rosenstein’s supervisor early in his Justice Department career when he was prosecuting public corruption cases.

Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked Mr. Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation because Mr. Sessions recused himself because of his role as a prominent Trump campaign supporter. Many of those same critics also have targeted Mr. McCabe, who was fired in March for failing to be forthcoming in a Justice Department inspector general investigation. Mr. McCabe’s actions were referred to federal prosecutors in Washington.

The president’s allies have seized on Mr. McCabe’s lack of candor to paint a damning picture of the F.B.I. under Mr. Comey and assert the Russia investigation is tainted.

The Justice Department denied a request in late July from Mr. Trump’s congressional allies to release Mr. McCabe’s memos, citing an ongoing investigation that the lawmakers believed to be Mr. Mueller’s. Mr. Rosenstein not only supervises that investigation but is considered by the president’s lawyers as a witness for their defense because he also sought the dismissal of Mr. Comey, which is being investigated as possible obstruction of justice.

Link




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Glorious SPAM!
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True or not Rosenstein is a leftist tyrant. I bet he kisses an autographed picture of Stalin every night before bed.

He runs the modern American version of the secret police, the DOJ and the FBI.

Didn't Session threaten to quit twice if Rosenstein was fired? Don't threaten me with a good time. Do it.
 
Posts: 10635 | Registered: June 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Is there not a law that prohibits surreptitiously taping the President during private meetings and consultations?


_________________________
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
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Posts: 12576 | Registered: January 17, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Too soon old,
too late smart
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Like to see him use up some or all of his resources defending himself against a long list of charges.
 
Posts: 4757 | Location: Southern Texas | Registered: May 17, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Festina Lente
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I have an idea. It is an old-school approach...




NRA Life Member - "Fear God and Dreadnaught"
 
Posts: 8295 | Location: in the red zone of the blue state, CT | Registered: October 15, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Get my pies
outta the oven!

Picture of PASig
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If his ass isn’t out of a job by Monday morning, I give up.


Maybe Trump fires his ass right now, then Sessions redeems himself, un-recuses, and takes back over and starts kicking some ass


 
Posts: 33601 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: November 12, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
quarter MOA visionary
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Curious why would the Fake News Times be publishing something bad about Rosenstein?
Seems odd they would be dissing one of their own. Confused
 
Posts: 22857 | Location: Houston, TX | Registered: June 11, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by smschulz:
Curious why would the Fake News Times be publishing something bad about Rosenstein?
Seems odd they would be dissing one of their own. Confused


Maybe it isn't seen as negative on Rosie, but devastating to Trump.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
wishing we
were congress
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So what is section 4 of the 25th amendment?

It requires the Vice President and a majority of principal officers of the executive body to declare the president unable to discharge his duties

The 25th amendment came about after the JFK assassination

also part of section 4, when the president writes that he has no disability, he resumes his powers, unless

the VP and majority of principal officers write they still think the president is unfit,

then Congress decides. It requires a 2/3 vote in both House and Senate to keep the president from resuming his office.
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
wishing we
were congress
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quote:
Mr. Rosenstein disputed this account.

“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he said in a statement. “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.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.



Might be something McCabe leaked to cause trouble

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

more:

https://hotair.com/archives/20...-amendment-deputies/

Update: The exact quote from Rosenstein about recording Trump, according to WaPo, was “What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?”

Which does sound a lot like sarcasm — and suggests that McCabe, not Rosenstein, was the one thinking of underhanded tactics to gather evidence on Trump

There’s also this: “Another official at the meeting, then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, wrote her own memo of the discussion which does not mention any talk of the 25th amendment, according to a second person who was familiar with her account.”

If all we have on the 25th Amendment comment is McCabe’s word that it happened, how much is that worth?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

this might be another nasty hit job by NYT
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Unapologetic Old
School Curmudgeon
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Explain to me why a mass firing bloodbath of these treasonous assholes would be bad before the election?

Trump should come on TV, lay out the case, and fire them all in one mass swoop.

First of all, the average dipshit low information voter will forget it happened by next week.

The base will erupt into joy and mass euphoria.

The Dems will whine and cry and scream and yell and be their usual selves.

And nothing will be different except Trump and the rest of us get huge win.

Be Trump. Do it. Wipe them out. All of them




Don't weep for the stupid, or you will be crying all day
 
Posts: 10719 | Location: TN | Registered: December 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
Explain to me why a mass firing bloodbath of these treasonous assholes would be bad before the election?

Trump should come on TV, lay out the case, and fire them all in one mass swoop.

First of all, the average dipshit low information voter will forget it happened by next week.

The base will erupt into joy and mass euphoria.

The Dems will whine and cry and scream and yell and be their usual selves.

And nothing will be different except Trump and the rest of us get huge win.

Be Trump. Do it. Wipe them out. All of them




My thoughts exactly. This should have happened a long time ago
 
Posts: 3369 | Registered: December 06, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of 45_Auto
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by PASig:
If his ass isn’t out of a job by Monday morning, I give up.


Maybe Trump fires his ass right now, then Sessions redeems himself, un-recuses, and takes back over and starts kicking some ass


Sessions is a wimp, he doesn't have the balls to kick ass, he needs to go. My vote would be to make Trey Gowdy the AG, then some asses would be kicked!


_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Veteran is someone who wrote a blank check Made payable to 'The United States of America' for an amount of 'Up to and including their life'.
That is Honor. Unfortunately there are way too many people in this Country who no longer understand that.
 
Posts: 2306 | Location: New Hampshire | Registered: November 29, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Staring back
from the abyss
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If this isn't fake news from the NYT, he should have his desk cleaned out by close of business today. Perhaps he and Sessions could share a cab.


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 19975 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
superior firepower
Picture of parabellum
posted Hide Post
Yes, I agree. Were I President Trump, I'd call in the guy and ask him to his face. If he admitted to it or I didn't believe his story, I'd demand his resignation on the spot.

Donald Trump is the legally-elected President of the United States. He won the election, despite powerful forces aligned against him. He's in office by the will of the People. This treasonous shit has to stop. This would be one way to start a civil war- for a substantial faction of government personnel to rebel against and attempt to sabotage the elected leader of this nation.


____________________________________________________

"I am your retribution." - Donald Trump, speech at CPAC, March 4, 2023
 
Posts: 107254 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Mired in the
Fog of Lucidity
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If this story is accurate Trump would certainly have grounds to fire Rosenstein. How ironic would that be that the info source is the New York Times! How will they then spin the firing? Kinda hard to make it obstructing an investigation.
 
Posts: 4850 | Registered: February 10, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Baroque Bloke
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“The story elicited an immediate response from members of Congress.

Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the conservative Freedom Caucus, said in a tweet that “if this story is true, it underscores a gravely troubling culture at FBI/DOJ and the need for FULL transparency.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the Times story “must not be used as a pretext for the corrupt purpose of firing Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein in order install an official who will allow the president to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation.”

Chuck you, Schumer.



Serious about crackers
 
Posts: 8851 | Location: San Diego | Registered: July 26, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
wishing we
were congress
posted Hide Post
NBC reporting it was a joke also

https://www.nbcnews.com/politi...-say-sources-n911981

In a May, 16, 2017 meeting at a secure facility at the Justice Department — one week after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey — Rosenstein was arguing with Andrew McCabe, then the acting director of the FBI, about the president, according to a senior Justice Department official.

"Well, what do you want me to do, Andy, wear a wire?" Rosenstein asked at the meeting, which also included FBI lawyer Lisa Page and four career DOJ officials, according to the senior official.

One of the career civil servants was Scott Schools, who would later go on to sign off on the firing of McCabe, the official said.

This official and a source who was in the room characterized Rosenstein's remark as sarcastic.

The senior official further said that the reference to invoking the Constitution to remove Trump comes from a post-meeting memo written by McCabe that said the deputy attorney general "raises 25th amendment" and that Page's notes from the same meeting do not contain any similar note.

Rosenstein said Friday that "there is no basis" for members of the Cabinet to use the Constitution's 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

McCabe has a book deal. The book is titled "The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump"

Hoping McCabe gets indicted. At least for lying.
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Mired in the
Fog of Lucidity
posted Hide Post
 
Posts: 4850 | Registered: February 10, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of MG34_Dan
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Have the military arrest this cox ucker for sedition and threats to the Commander and Chief. Throw his ass in Guantanamo Bay.


“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”
– Barack Hussein Obama, January 23, 2009
 
Posts: 2184 | Location: Austin Texas USA | Registered: February 03, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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