potential witness and then speaking of awkward positions, maybe unemploymenting himself to play donny brass coe in the same movie. so here we are. tell us about the rod rosenstein you ve been reporting on. bryan, i ve been reporting on him for some time. the first time i ever spoke to rod rosenstein he was a u.s. attorney in maryland. we were talking about gang violence. that was a position he loved to be in, and then he got thrown into the spotlight in this job. i ve been following the evolution of rod rosenstein, especially from people close to him and in legal circles in washington. at this particular time michael schmidt focused on, he was incredibly vulnerable, especially to the criticism of people who he wanted respect from. these are people who were very critical of his decision to fire jim comey and he immediately felt the need to appoint the special counsel in order to vindicate himself. and he thought history would prove him right to fire jim