Rod Rosenstein. Photo / AP
Advisers to US President Donald Trump are counselling him against firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein over memos written by the former acting director of the FBI that say Rosenstein proposed secretly recording the President and pushed for his removal from office.
The details of the memos written by former
deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe when he was acting director were revealed on Saturday, prompting immediate speculation that the information would give Trump the justification to do what he has long desired: Dismiss Rosenstein, the Justice Department official overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But those close to Trump believe that a politically charged firing in advance of the midterm elections will feed a Democratic narrative of chaos in the Administration, and that the President should wait until November to make any changes at the Justice Department.
Rosenstein issued a public statement disputing the accuracy of the New York Times story that described the memos written by McCabe and his then-in-house counsel, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. He issued a second statement after meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly.
Mention of the constitutional option to remove Trump echoed a recent op-ed in the New York Times by an anonymous senior official in the Administration who wrote that "there were early whispers within the Cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment".
