“Rod Rosenstein immediately appointed Mueller as a special counsel in the matter after this ... because Trump’s statement directly contradicted the Rosenstein memo where he called for Comey’s termination over his handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation from 2016. “
Rosenstein’s memo was NOT contradicted. Rosenstein said why HE thought Comey should be fired. Trump fired him for that and for his other criminal behavior including surreptitiously evesdropping on Trump himself at Trump Tower.
Trump was in no way restricted to the reasons laid out in Rosensteins memo. That might be 5% of his reason. And Trump saying something that rosenstein disagreed with does not justify the FBI starting an illegal investigation.
Thank you. Exactly!