President Donald Trump on Thursday postponed a meeting with Rod Rosenstein amid continued speculation over the deputy U.S. attorney general’s future in the role.
The New York Times reported Monday that Rosenstein was considering resigning after reports surfaced last week that he floated the idea of secretly recording Trump and removing him from office using the 25th Amendment.
Update 12:50 p.m. EDT Sept. 27: The White House announced Thursday afternoon that Trump and Rosenstein agreed to meet next week, instead of on Thursday as planned, as the Senate Judiciary Committee continued hearing testimony about sexual misconduct allegations leveled against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
"They do not want to do anything to interfere with the hearing," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
Update 3:05 p.m. EDT Sept. 24: Trump confirmed that he and Rosenstein will meet Thursday to determine the deputy U.S. attorney general's fate in the White House.
“We’ll be determining what’s going on,” Trump said while at the United Nations in New York. “We want to have transparency. We want to have openness, and I’m looking forward to meeting Rod at that time.”
Update 12:55 p.m. EDT Sept. 24: It was not immediately clear whether Rosenstein submitted his resignation or not. An unidentified source told Bloomberg News that the White House accepted his resignation Monday while The Associated Press reported that Rosenstein was expecting to be fired.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Trump and Rosenstein spoke Monday “to discuss the recent news stories.”
“Because the President is at the United Nations General Assembly and has a full schedule with leaders from around the world, they will meet on Thursday when the President returns to Washington, D.C.,” she said.
Original report: Axios reported Monday morning that Rosenstein "verbally resigned" to Chief of Staff John Kelly in the wake of reports that claimed he discussed trying to remove President Donald Trump from office using the 25th Amendment and that he floated the idea of secretly recording the president.
An unidentified source told Bloomberg News that the White House accepted Rosenstein's resignation Monday.
White House officials did not immediately confirm the reports.
The Associated Press reported that Rosenstein was expecting to be fired after The New York Times reported Friday that he spoke to Justice Department and FBI officials about secretly recording Trump and recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office shortly after the May 2017 firing of then-FBI director James Comey.
In the aftermath of Comey's firing, Rosenstein became frustrated by Trump's use of a memo he wrote in justifying Comey's dismissal, according to the Times. The three-page memo was critical of Comey's handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while in office.
"Rosenstein began telling associates that he would ultimately be 'vindicated' for his role in the matter" shortly after the FBI director's dismissal, the Times reported.
Rosenstein said in statement released last week that the Times report was “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”
Rosenstein is the top Justice Department official overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and its possible ties to Trump and Trump campaign officials.
Rosenstein took charge of the investigation in March 2017 after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself under pressure over his own contacts with Russian officials.
Check back for updates to this developing story.
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