that is likely to set the president on fire. remember, the president has been back and forth with rosenstein for a long time. last summer he tweeted out that he couldn t believe he was being investigated for firing the director of the fbi by someone who told him to fire the director of the fbi. a clear reference to rosenstein. there were worries then he was going to fire him. that relationship seemed to improve lately. he told the wall street journal a month ago that rosenstein was fantastic now. so they ve been off and on over the years, and rosenstein has clearly tried to pull the president back from making some really harmful decisions that would hurt national security by releasing classified information and other things. but if you look at this story today, it very much has to put rosenstein in danger. when the president gets back from this trip he s on, has time to sit and stew over the weekend and start tweeting over the weekend, you have to wonder if rosenstein can survive thi
with all the other news to reverse himself on the declassification of documents and communications including text messages from doj and fbi. what do you know about this? what can you infer about this? some of us who watched this story unfold foresaul a principled patriotic rebellion inside the intelligence community saying mr. president, declassifying our nation s most sensitive secrets for political gain is not the way we run things around here, it s dangerous for national security, and it s not going to happen on our watch. they pushed back and it appears they have won over the president. the president had to back down embarrassingly with his tail between his legs and say uncle. i think the professionals have to be yielded to in this one rare instance. matt miller, i m duty-bound to end with this question to you. if someone breaks glass over the weekend and if rosenstein gets
fired, what chain of events does that trigger, and most immediately who takes over? the line of succession will go next to the solicitor general, noel francisco, kind of a career member of the conservative establishment here in washington. he s the government s chief appellate lawyer, argues before the supreme court. a very conservative lawyer. i don t know him to be an unprincipled lawyer. it s one thing for the president if he s going to move on mueller to fire rosenstein or sessions and try to take control of the probe. finding someone who will carry out what is an obviously illegitimate order to either fire mueller or somehow circumscribe the probe to prevent it from going forward, that is a very tough thing to do and specially because i don t know who on the president s staff is going to help him do that. don mcgahn who s been talking
rationale for it saying that he handled that investigation of hillary clinton incorrectly. then rosenstein was being criticized sharply for basically helping create what was believed to be a fake story about why they fired him, and rosenstein sort of lost it. he became unnerved. he was very emotional. he was very upset. he said things that were at times irrational and didn t really add up with what was going on around him. in that period of time he discussed two things that we found particularly interesting. one of them was about wearing a wire, and the other was about the 25th amendment. for us this provided a window into what was going on at the justice department at this crucial time as the justice department made the ultimate decision, the extraordinary decision of appointing a special counsel to investigate the president of the united states. how long have you been reporting out this story? weeks? months? we ve been looking at this issue for months. this is something this is
around trump sought to sway him not to make any decision friday night. during those discussions the president said he did not trust rosenstein or mccabe, the adviser said. what s your takeaway from all of this at this hour, jeremy? and what, if anything, are you expecting to see tomorrow over the weekend? i think we got pretty close tonight to a friday night massacre. people have been saying all night that the president has the justification he needs now to fire rod rosenstein. i think it s important to say no, he does not. this was information about conversations that happened during one meeting or a series of meetings on one day in may, 2017 before the mueller investigation was kicked off, before any of us knew about the trump tower meeting, before the indictments of manafort and gates and papadopoulos and flynn. and before the indictments of senior russian officials who interfered in the 2016 election.