WASHINGTON--President Donald Trump and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election, will meet on Thursday to discuss whether Rosenstein will stay in his job.
Rosenstein had spent the weekend contemplating whether he should resign after a New York Times report last week said he had suggested secretly recording Trump in 2017, a source told Reuters. The White House announced the meeting on Monday after a flurry of conflicting media reports about whether Rosenstein, a frequent target of Trump's anger, would be leaving the post.
"At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter.
Trump, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, told reporters he would meet with Rosenstein on Thursday when he returns to Washington. "We'll be meeting at the White House and we'll be determining what's going on," Trump said. "We want to have transparency, we want to have openness, and I look forward to meeting with Rod at that time."
The Rosenstein furor, kicked off by unconfirmed reports that he had verbally resigned, underscored the mounting tension in the White House over the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election. There had been widespread speculation that Trump would fire Rosenstein since Friday when a New York Times report said that in 2017 Rosenstein had suggested secretly recording the president and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke a constitutional amendment to remove him from office.
The Times said none of those proposals came to fruition. Rosenstein denied the report as "inaccurate and factually incorrect."
Shortly after the Times story, Trump told supporters at a rally in Missouri that there is "a lingering stench" at the Justice Department and that "we’re going to get rid of that, too."
Rosenstein's departure would prompt questions about the future of Mueller's investigation and whether Trump, who has called the probe a "witch hunt," would seek to remove Mueller. The investigation has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas from 32 people.
