M******e
发帖数: 1193 | 1 Rosenstein Suggested He Secretly Record Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/us/politics/rod-rosenstein-wear-wire-25th
-amendment.html
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.
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.
A determined Mr. Rosenstein began telling associates that he would
ultimately be “vindicated” for his role in the matter. One week after the
firing, Mr. Rosenstein met with Mr. McCabe and at least four other senior
Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.
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. | r******g
发帖数: 4002 | 2 Rosenstein否认了，可是他一定干了这事。川普就是政坛经验不足，一开始太相信那些
犹太人了，最后发现都是那些犹太人高官在暗中搞他。犹太人群体是美国最无耻的群体！ | m*****w
发帖数: 549 | 3 很多都明了了。NY times 发匿名文章反总统，总统要求解密。有些文件给传出来了，
发现了Rosenstein的黑料。
NYTimes 不管了，只要是爆炸新闻，不管是对谁有利，都报道。
这报道明显找足了借口要Fire Rosenstein.绝对是对Trump的大好消息。估计背景非常
精彩。 | N*******M
发帖数: 3963 | 4 人民的眼睛是雪亮的
体！
【在 r******g 的大作中提到】
: Rosenstein否认了，可是他一定干了这事。川普就是政坛经验不足，一开始太相信那些
: 犹太人了，最后发现都是那些犹太人高官在暗中搞他。犹太人群体是美国最无耻的群体！
| k**i
发帖数: 10191 | 5 早说了，老川倒霉挑了个不干活的塞斯，结果丫居然避嫌躲开通俄调查，让猪党继续用
这个搞老川。负责这事的Rosenstein，居然从2017年就开始打算用宪法修正案第25款把
大选选出来的老川搞下台。 | k**i
发帖数: 10191 | 6 更有趣的是评论里面一群作弊上蹿下跳的不信，说是老川在捏造。NYT不是作弊的报纸
么？ | a******5
发帖数: 2062 | |
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