This is a crazy story being reported by the NY Times.
They are asserting, via sources, that Rosenstein suggested he secretly record Trump to expose the chaos in the White House and then convince cabinet members to impeach Trump based on the 25th amendment.
The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.
Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.
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.
None of Mr. Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition. It is not clear how determined he was about seeing them through, though he did tell Mr. McCabe that he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Rosenstein put out a statement to the NY Times saying it’s not true:
“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.”
The DOJ also backed Rosenstein up on this saying he was only being sarcastic:
A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.
But the Times says others said Rosenstein was being serious:
But according to the others who described his comments, Mr. Rosenstein not only confirmed that he was serious about the idea but also followed up by suggesting that other F.B.I. officials who were interviewing to be the bureau’s director could also secretly record Mr. Trump.
Mr. McCabe, who was later fired from the F.B.I., declined to comment.
That last line there about McCabe refusing to comment makes me wonder it the story really isn’t true. After all if it were true he’d probably admit it just to see the chaos it would cause the Trump administration. If it weren’t true and he admitted that, it would kill the story. And you know he probably doesn’t want to see that happen.
The overall story sounds ridiculous to me, especially considering how people have always described Rosenstein as a ‘by the book’ kind of guy – that is before the Russia probe. It’s far more believable to me that he was being sarcastic on a bad day or something – especially considering nothing ever came of his ‘proposals’.