WH rumor-mongerers Maggie “Third-Rate” Haberman and Michael “squat to power” Schmidt do tend to carry more access-journalism water for Trump.
Today’s story by Schmidt triggered some twittering about whether “the ______day night massacre” is coming. Will update if something drops in next couple of hours. Bots are hard at work trying to trend this. (My favorite is the bot comparing Rosenstein and Himmler in photos much like Sideshow Ed Whelan.)
This “scoop” may be simply a WH stunt, and may actually be yet another diversion from Trump having to backtrack from declassifying FISA materials, because it’s a means to divulge/leak the content of Andrew McCabe’s notes. All the news that’s tooled by tools.
OTOH, Rosenstein had been used: quoted verbatim to rationalize the Comey firing, but more interesting is that since then, perhaps Rosenstein has worn a wire in all of his POTUS* conversations.
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.
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“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.”
www.nytimes.com/...
More likely, this piece is another Bill Shiney object, but it does signal how desperate life is on the road to the bunker.
The WH does need to counter the revelation that Michael Cohen’s been talking to Mueller more than previously reported and the subsequent reporting that Manafort’s plea deal has some elements that make it more difficult to get a pardon.
The best that they can do is spin a note about a sarcastic comment that has been debunked as such by another source who was actually present at the time of the actual utterance. The same NY Times reporter Adam Goldman who doubled down on Hillary emails, doubles down on the veracity of quoting a third-hand source, only trashing his own credibility in the process. The third stooge.
All eyes are on what Donald Trump will do, as the oracles on Twitter and the Hill have predicted that the president may fire Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller around the holidays. Trump’s lawyers have denied that he is considering such a move, and Trump himself has not directly criticized Mueller. However, Trump has recently expressed dissatisfaction with Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Rod Rosenstein, calling him “weak” and a threat. Along with those comments, the Washington Post reports that “Trump appeared to be contemplating changes in the Justice Department’s leadership.” In short, there’s a good chance that the guillotine is poised for Rosenstein, not for Mueller – and if so, that is cause for even greater concern for all who care about the integrity of the Russia investigation and, yes, the rule of law.
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Removing Rosenstein and replacing him with a DAG who is at the very least more sympathetic to Trump could have drastic repercussions on the investigation. The new DAG could burden the Special Counsel with a requirement to provide an explanation for every move he makes, and then decide that they aren’t necessary or appropriate. In fact, since Mueller is required to provide the DAG with at least three days’ notice in advance of any “significant event” in the investigation, she would have plenty of time to intervene and challenge Mueller’s actions (and a less scrupulous DAG could even leak Mueller’s plans to the White House or others). A new DAG would even have the ultimate—er, trump card: she could decide at some point that the investigation should not even continue at all.
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In short, the president has one move he can make in which the benefits to him might outweigh the costs. Since Rosenstein is his own political appointee, Trump has great discretion in deciding whether to remove him and can do it quickly and directly. And by removing Rosenstein but not touching Mueller, Trump can claim that he is in fact not trying to interfere with the Russia investigation at all: Indeed, it could be very hard to prove otherwise, which insulates him significantly from further obstruction charges. Firing Rosenstein but keeping Mueller gives the president the ultimate political and legal protection, and the crystal ball-gazers need to consider it.
This is what it’s about…. Trump’s failure to declassify the FISA documents