Here it is, I’ll post just a few excerpts. It’s a long article and a bit turgid, needs an editor, but the points made are clear.
DOJ Emails Reveal Internal Response to ‘Wiretap’ Allegations Against Rosenstein
Newly released emails by the Department of Justice (DOJ) reveal details about the internal response by the agency to allegations that then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had wanted to wiretap President Donald Trump and invoke the 25th Amendment against him.
The allegations were first reported by The New York Times on September 2018. The article, headlined “Rod Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment,” claimed that 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.”
The New York Times article included a response statement from Rosenstein, who refuted the story, calling it “inaccurate and factually incorrect”:
“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect … 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 New York Times article also noted that a Justice Department spokeswoman had provided the newspaper with a statement from a “person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire” but did not directly quote the statement, noting only that the “person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.”
............................
“During a conversation about how one would attempt to record any outlandish statements made by the president in private, Rosenstein responded with what one person described as a sarcastic comment along the lines of, ‘What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?’
“That person insisted the statement was not meant seriously. At one point in the May 16 discussions, another senior Justice Department official remarked that it was crazy that they were engaged in such conversations at all.”
.............................
The Washington Post article also acknowledged that “A Justice Department official who met frequently with both McCabe and Rosenstein said that in the months that followed, Rosenstein never broached either subject — the 25th Amendment or a possible wiretap involving the president.” The article also pointed out that the claims from McCabe “come at a time when a grand jury has been hearing evidence in a case of possible criminal false statements by McCabe.”
.............................
According to comments contained in the Washington Post article, the conversation between McCabe and Rosenstein was framed in an entirely different light, noting that Rosenstein responded with sarcasm to McCabe’s suggestions, saying, “What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?” This comment is presumably coming from Schools via the DOJ’s Sept. 20, 2018, response.
Sometime later the same day, both Rosenstein and Trump met with former FBI Director Robert Mueller in the Oval Office. Rosenstein would appoint Mueller as special counsel the following day, on May 17, 2017, and in doing so, Rosenstein removed control of the Trump-Russia investigation from McCabe and put it into Mueller’s hands.
This was confirmed by a Feb. 2019 statement by a DOJ spokesperson, who said, “The deputy attorney general in fact appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, and directed that Mr. McCabe be removed from any participation in that investigation.”
Thanks LJ for the informative article.