Washington, Deputy US Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggested wearing a “wire” to record conversations with President Donald Trump and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for being unfit, according to a media report.
Rosenstein made these suggestions in 2017 when Trump’s firing of former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) James Comey plunged the White House into turmoil, The New York Times report said on Friday.
Over the ensuing days, the President divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Trump had asked Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.
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 Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
But Rosenstein was caught off guard when Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.
The Deputy Attorney General made the remarks about secretly recording Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and FBI officials, informed sources told The New York Times.
The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by FBI officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Rosenstein’s actions and comments.
However, none of Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition.
Rosenstein on Friday disputed the claims.
“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.”
