Is Rosenstein toast?
The news is coming from all angles today. There’s a report that Rod Rosenstein is on the way out:
Axios has reported that “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has verbally resigned to Chief of Staff John Kelly in anticipation of being fired by President Trump, according to a source with direct knowledge.”
Other reports indicate that Rosenstein is headed to the White House and “expecting to be fired” and he will not resign.
Last week, The New York Times wrote using anonymous resources that Rosenstein offered to wear a wire to tape Trump and try to rally Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment.
That’s about it so far. An anonymous source tells us Rosenstein and/or Trump is doing this, and the leavetaking is apparently is based on last week’s Times story (based on an anonymous source) that Rosenstein had offered to spy on Trump for the Resistance.
I will update when more is known.
I do wonder, though, why the Times published the story about the wire offer. I would have thought they wanted to protect Rosenstein. There’s an angle here I must not be seeing. Perhaps it’s that they wanted to provoke Trump into firing Rosenstein, and then have Trump attacked for it?
In the Punch / Rosenthal era, we’d have assumed The Times was just reporting. Never again. Rosenthal’s dead and MacNeill, Lehrer, and Koppel are all retired.
A “source” just reported at Fox said that today’s WH meeting was a scheduled meeting and that Rosenstein will meet with Trump on Thursday. In other words, nobody really knows whats going on. In Trump’s world, 3 days is a long time. Meanwhile nobody is reporting on the UN.
Instapundit has a link to RedState about this.
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2018/09/24/breaking.-rod-rosenstein-not-fired-not-resigned
Posted at 1:09 pm on September 24, 2018 by streiff
“On a couple levels, this is not surprising. Firing Rosenstein now, amidst the Kavanaugh confirmation fight and with a crucial mid-term election looming would be manifestly unwise. This is not to say that doing unwise things is outside the realm of possibilities when predicting any action by President Trump, but he has a keenly honed survivor’s instinct and that counts. Secondly, we’ve seen over time that the best way to ensure your job security with Trump is to leak to the news media that you’re about to be fired. Trump would much rather point-and-laugh at the media for erroneous reporting based on anonymous sources than he would fire someone.
I suspect that Rosenstein is on very thin ice, and deservedly so. Even if his statement, as documented in McCabe’s meeting notes, about wiretapping Trump was facetious, him not only not stomping hard on people talking about invoking the 25th Amendment but seeming to go along with the idea says he is simply too disloyal to the administration to be tolerated in a position of responsibility.”
After reading endless posts in the soap-opera saga “The Dems Destroy Kavanaugh – NOT” for the last week (which seems like forever), I was almost relieved to read a nice, peaceful expose of their prior existence as “The Party Formerly Known as only Partially Insane.”
https://www.weeklystandard.com/eric-felten/why-is-the-nyt-suddenly-opposed-to-declassifying-the-fisa-docs
September 24, 2018 at 11:06 AM
In February, one reporter filed to have information about Carter Page’s warrant released. Now? The paper worries about ‘security concerns.’
“According to the Times, it didn’t take long for the law enforcement establishment’s fears to be realized: Goldman has been talking to “[f]ormer and current F.B.I. officials” who “have expressed concern that the Republican efforts to out the materials could have long-lasting consequences, making it harder to recruit informants willing to help with investigations who are the lifeblood of law enforcement.”
The president and his partisans, the Times lamented, were putting party ahead of national security. “For months, Mr. Trump and some of his most fervent congressional supporter have clamored for the material’s release against the protests of the intelligence and law enforcement communities,” Goldman wrote. Trump’s order to release unredacted FISA documents was just “the latest instance of the president siding with Republican allies on Capitol Hill over federal law enforcement.”
And yet, there’s something rather strange about Goldman denouncing the release of FISA documents: Back on February 5, the reporter filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking the FISC “to order publication of all of its orders authorizing surveillance of Carter Page.” And not just that: Goldman (together with fellow Timesman Charlie Savage and the Gray Lady herself) also asked the court for all “the application materials and renewal application materials upon which those orders were issued.”
The context, of course, was a little different back then.
…
An entire section of Goldman’s filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is devoted to the proposition that so much of the FISA warrants was already out in the open that one couldn’t argue to keep what’s left under lock and key. The section is headed with this unambiguous statement in bold, capital letters, partially underlined:
…
But that was then. Now, Goldman warns us, any such release is a threat to “the lifeblood of law enforcement.” One can hope that the change of perspective is due to more than just the expectation, then, that the warrants would hurt Trump versus the expectation, now, that they may help the president.
It’s possible Goldman might not remember that he’s the “movant” in a motion before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. If he had remembered, surely he would have disclosed it to readers, who might want to know that the reporter telling them of the dangers of releasing FISA warrants is trying to get the court to release those very FISA warrants to him.
Readers might also want to know that the motion with Goldman’s name on it isn’t just an artifact of the past, not even the recent past. It continues to be before the court.
…
That means while Goldman was quoting FBI and intelligence sources on the terrible things that would come of releasing unredacted FISA warrants, among other closely held documents, he was asking the FISA court to give him the Carter Page warrants.
Of these two contradictory stances, the argument Goldman makes in the court motions is the one I find more compelling. “
Simplest explanation…they published it because they deemed it fit to print, despite wanting to protect Rosenstein.
I mean, the NYTimes published Judith Miller’s WMD’s stories, which turned out to be until to print, even though they aided the Bush Admin’s march toward war.
Regardless of whether Rosenstein resigns or not, this is a good essay about the situation.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/24/two_big_takeaways_from_the_rosenstein_bombshell_138146.html
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/rod-rosenstein-resistance-president-trump/
Rod Rosenstein’s Resistance
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
September 23, 2018 7:55 PM
[let’s just say, Andy is not a happy camper]
My dream:
On Thursday, Trump and Rosenstein appear together at a press conference where Rosenstein announces that Mueller is closing his investigation because he has found no collusion or obstruction of justice. He says that the investigation has provided the justice dept a lot of info into how foreign governments have interfered in and continue to try to manipulate our elections. As a results we are able to take more measures to protect our country.
After they leave the podium, the Judiciary committee will forward Kavanaugh’s appointment to the full senate, wher it will be voted on by midnight.
No, I haven’t been drinking–unless tea counts.
Dave:
The allegations are that he attacked women he had already trapped by trickery into being alone with him, that he physically overpowered them, and that he then threatened them with career-ending retaliation and in some cases followed through with it.
“Last week, The New York Times wrote using anonymous resources that Rosenstein offered to wear a wire to tape Trump and try to rally Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
I would think we’d all have internalized it by now:
IF it’s in The Noo Yawk Times,
THEN it is *strictly* *rumor*,
until a reliable source is found that can confirm or deny.
“until a reliable source is found that can confirm or deny.”
WaPo, CNN, and AP don’t count.
I agree that sometimes the guilty must go free even if they are scumbags in order to assure all receive their protections under the law.
If the fisa warrants go public and RR is a bad boy, he will be useless to the left.
The left has no problem eating their own, to continue marching forward towards dictatorial rule when the pawn is no longer useful.