According to a major new story published by the New York Times, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was so concerned with the stability of President Trump last May that in meetings at the Department of Justice, he suggested taping private conversations with Trump and floated the use of the 25th Amendment to oust him.
That raises profound questions too multiple to address in one post, but let’s start with the most basic: Is it accurate? According to Rosenstein, it is not:
“The New York Times’s story is 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. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
Note that Rosenstein could have specifically denied proposing to secretly tape conversations with Trump. He does not. He says that in his opinion, there is currently “no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment,” but he does not address what opinion he expressed on that matter back in 2017.
And when Rosenstein attributes the claims to “anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda,” he might be referring to any number of people. However, Andy McCabe, the ex-FBI official who was ousted hours short of his pension and now faces a criminal probe, was a key player in these events and may now be leaking to take vengeance for his treatment. It’s worth noting that in the Washington Post version of events, Rosenstein is depicted as making those same proposals, but doing so sarcastically, in response to a proposal by McCabe that the FBI open an investigation into the president.
Whatever their differences, both versions depict a federal government in total meltdown in spring 2017. Trump had fired Comey, saying publicly that he had done so to end the Russia probe. He had also just handed classified secrets to Russian officials in the Oval Office. The GOP was so panicked by the uproar that it eagerly welcomed the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to calm things down. This came the day after the meeting described in the Times:
In short, it was Crazytown. And as we’ve all learned since, Trump’s crazy begets crazy in other people, and since crazy is Trump’s natural environment, he thrives in it while others struggle to adapt. Thrown into chaos, the by-the-book Rosenstein and DOJ had no rules or guidelines to tell them how to act in this new environment.
But here's the really crazy part: Questions about what really happened back in May of 2017 are almost academic. What matters today is that Trump and his allies have long depicted the FBI and Department of Justice as a den of anti-Trump conspiracists, and they have long hungered for an excuse to gut it. This story provides it.
In fact, this not only gives Trump that excuse to fire Rosenstein, Jeff Sessions, etc., it creates an almost irresistible momentum to do so. In the counterfactual universe that Trump has created for his base, he’ll have a hard time explaining to them why he DOESN’T use this chance to clean house.
So is it accurate? Doesn’t matter. Were the statements made as a joke? Doesn’t matter. Would it be smart for Trump to dump Rosenstein, and maybe Sessions and Mueller with him? Probably not; doesn’t matter. Smart doesn’t matter. The hounds in Congress and right-wing media are braying for blood, and I suspect they’ll get it.
Forget it, Jake. It's Crazytown.
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