Trump leaves door open to firing Rosenstein

President Trump is declining to comment on a new report that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sought to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from the White House. 

“I don’t want to comment on it until I get all the facts,” Trump said in an interview on “Geraldo in Cleveland” on WTAM radio in Cleveland that is set to air on Monday, according to The New York Times.

{mosads}But the president left the door open to firing Rosenstein, saying a decision is “being looked at.”

“I haven’t gotten all the facts, but certainly it’s being looked at in terms of what took place,” Trump added. “If anything took place and I’ll make a determination sometime later, but I don’t have the facts.”

His comments came just days after The New York Times reported that Rosenstein proposed surreptitiously recording conversations with Trump and discussed the possibility of administration officials invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

The report said that the proposals from Rosenstein were brought up after Trump fired former FBI director James Come in the spring of 2017. 

Rosenstein reportedly attempted to recruit Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House chief of staff John Kelly to aid him in invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows a majority vote by a president’s Cabinet to remove him if he is deemed unfit for office. 

Rosenstein has aggressively pushed back against the report, calling it “factually incorrect.” 

“[I] never pursued or authorized recording the President and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false,” Rosenstein said in a statement. 

Trump’s remarks on Monday were the first time he’s directly commented on Rosenstein since the report surfaced last Friday. Trump said at a rally in Missouri late Friday that he was prepared to get rid of the “lingering stench” at the Department of Justice (DOJ). 

The Times noted that advisers are attempting to keep Trump from dismissing Rosenstein until at least after the midterm elections.