Rosenstein Contradicts Trump On Comey Firing Memo
Rod Rosenstein Image by Getty Images
By Aiden Pink May 18, 2017
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly told senators that he knew President Trump was going to fire FBI Director James Comey before writing a memo outlining Comey’s alleged failings. That revelation undercuts the timeline promoted by the White House in recent days.
Sen. Claire McCaskill told reporters after the briefing that Rosenstein had “acknowledged that he learned Comey would be removed prior to him writing his memo.”
“He learned the president’s decision to fire him and then he wrote his memo with his rationale,” Sen. Dick Durbin said.
This contradicts White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s claim in the aftermath of the May 9 firing that the decision “was a [Department of Justice] decision” that “was all him” — meaning Rosenstein. It also lends credence to reports that Rosenstein had threatened to resign after learning that the Comey firing was being blamed on him.
President Trump himself has waffled on why he fired Comey, telling NBC’s Lester Holt last week, “I was going to fire regardless of recommendation,” but then saying in a press conference Thursday that he chose to fire Comey only after reading the memo from Rosenstein.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
