correspondent, evan perez. what are you learning about the strategy behind calling rosenstein to testify in the coming days? well, wolf, now you have the president s allies in congress, matt gates and mark meadows, now saying they want to bring rosenstein to testify. perhaps as soon as this week about this this story in the new york times about his comments, allegedly made invoking the 25th amendment and about wiretapping the president. they think that bringing him to capitol hill and making him testify under oath will do a couple of things. it will certainly make rosenstein have to answer those tough questions, and people behind the scenes are advising the president not to fire rosenstein. instead to let this happen. because they believe that rod rosenstein will be damaged as a result of that hearing. he ll either have to resign or certainly they believe will make the politics a little bit better for him to be pushed out by the president. so that s what the president is hearing
trump during investigation. the rules do not apply to donald trump. because people like paul ryan and devin nunes say the rules that apply to you and me and 320 million americans don t apply to them. we ve seen it in such vivid display this week. day after day as well. when paul ryan was asked, do you think this is having any impact on our institutions, he says point-blank, no. but it s friday, so let s do a week in review. just this week, it s not just what happened yesterday. it was an outing of a confidential source, it was the president himself ordering this meeting, calling rosenstein and ray and dni director coats and saying he wants this meeting and then not even trying to hide it. sending his own personal lawyer there and having rudy giuliani coming out after and saying it depends on how much information we get. so it s in full view and its intentional. they re not, they re almost cutting out the middleman here,
bob mueller. but it should equally be crossing a red line if he were to fire rod rosenstein as well. reporter: and what red line is that? it s a red line in terms of totally turning the rule of law on its head. some republicans would see it as a step in the right direction, calling rosenstein conflicted because he wrote the comey memo. they also fume he won t provide his unredacted internal memo detailing the scope of the mueller investigation. the president himself again threatening. at some point, i will have no choice but no to the use the powers granted to the presidency and get involved. are you afraid of president trump firing you? no, i m not. rod is he s like shockingly fatalistic. there are people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time, and i think they should understand by now the department of justice is not going to be extorted.
terms of totally turning the rule of law on its head. reporter: some republicans would see it as a step in the right direction, calling rosenstein conflicted because he wrote the comey memo. they also fume he won t provide his unredacted internal memo detailing the scope of the mueller investigation. the president himself again threatening. at some point, i will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the presidency and get involved. are you afraid of president trump firing you? no, i m not, congressman. rod is he s like shockingly fatalistic. there are people who have been making threats, privately and publicly, against me, for quite some time, and i think they should understand by now that the department of justice is not going to be extorted. he s a career public servant. he s a career prosecutor. whatever mr. trump wants to say, frankly can only make his reputation go up. reporter: even if he gets
my guess because at that point it s untenable. you have a, you have a president who is not respecting the process, not respecting the constitution. he won t do t. reporter: he won t? no. it would be a red line for the president to fire robert mueller. it would be equally a red line if he were to fire rod rosenstein as well. reporter: what red line is that? it is a red line in terms of turning the rule of law on its head. reporter: some republicans would see it as a step in the right direction, calling rosenstein conflicted because he wrote the comey memo. they also fume he won t provide his unredacted internal memo detailing the scope of the mueller investigation. the president himself again threatening, at some point, i will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the presidency and get involved. are you afraid of president trump firing you? no, i m not, congressman.