Source tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that comment about wearing a wire was ‘sarcastic.’
T he New York Times published Friday afternoon what reads like a bombshell: “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.”
According to the piece, Rosenstein expressed frustration with how President Trump had relied heavily on the deputy AG’s memo documenting James Comey’s mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation to fire the FBI director. In one conversation with former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and at least four other senior officials at the Justice Department, Rosenstein reportedly “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.” The story goes on to say that the “idea went nowhere.”
Rosenstein responded to the Times story with a statement calling it “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,” Rosenstein said. “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 story is sourced to several people “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.” Someone who was in the room with Rosenstein, McCabe, and the other officials told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Rosenstein’s comment about wearing a wire was “sarcastic and was never discussed with any intention of recording a conversation with the president.” A separate former Justice Department official told TWS that it would be “100 percent in character for [Rosenstein] to make a joke.”
According to a subsequent Washington Post story, Rosenstein’s “wire” comment was a sarcastic rejoinder to McCabe, who, a source told the Post, wanted to “open an investigation into the president.”
McCabe, who resigned as deputy director in January and went on paid leave until he was officially fired in March, features prominently in the Times story but declined to comment to the paper. A federal grand jury is currently looking into whether McCabe ought to be charged with a crime after an inspector general’s report determined he “lacked candor” with the FBI about conversations the deputy director had with a reporter in 2016 about the ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe’s attorney, Michael Bromwich, did not respond to TWS’s request for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment on whether or when a possible indictment for McCabe might come down.
Publisher St. Martin’s Press announced earlier this week McCabe has a deal for a book about his career at the FBI. According to the publisher, McCabe says he wrote the book “because the president’s attacks on me symbolize his destructive effect on the country as a whole.”
