bipartisan gatheringf the senate and then he went quiet. no press releases, no speeches, definitely no media interviews until tonight. rod rosenstein spoke to the media for the first time since this all blew up. he spoke about russia and whether the man he picked to run this inquiry has the authority to potentially investigate him, rod rosenstein. here s what rosenstein tells the ap tonight. quote, i ve talked to director mueller about this. he is going to make the appropriate additions and if anything did i winds up being relevant to his investigation, if there s a need for me to recuse, i will. a spokesman for mr. mueller in the article declined to comment. here s why this all matters, even if this is, to be clear, a hypothetical point. mueller has independence but rosenstein oversees him. rosenstein was involved, as i was just mentioning, that
instance. they used his memo as an excuse as to why they were firing comey, when in fact, trump later admitted that was not the actual reason for firing him. in fact, it was the russian investigation that he wanted to get rid of. so in a way, they were using rosenstein and using his memo as pretext in order to fire comey and keep it away from the russian investigation. so just on that basis alone, rod rosenstein is a key witness in this case. so when you say rod rosenstein is a witness and mueller s russian investigation, you re saying he is a witness to how president trump fired jim comey and why? because it all the resulted in an obstruction of justice. if you look at the entire pattern of what occurred here from the time the trump white house was warned about michael flynn, and the fact that he was subject to bribery and blackmail by the russians, the fact that
top two doj officials, rod rosenstein and jeff sessions. they sent that letter that trump may fire comey for one reason, that comey was allegedly unfair to hillary clinton, which later president trump said was not the real or only reason he fired come rosenstein wrote a memo and he and seions discussed that firing with trump, despite sessions refusal to recuse himself, trump officials said that caused the firing. trump, of course, admitted that was not true in an interview with nbc s lester holt. did you ask for a recommendation? what did i was i was going to fire comey. my decision. it was not you had made the decision before i was going to fire comey. there s no good time to do it, by the way. in your letter, you said i accepted their recommendation. you had already made the decision. i was going to fire him regardless of recommendation. so he addition. he made a recommendation.
memos that he would write up after exchanges or encounters that made him uncomfortable. we know, for instance, that he did this in february after an oval office meeting in which he says president trump asked him if he would consider ending the investigation into michael flynn, who was, of course, president trump s first national security advis. i think the senate will be very interested in that and i think former director comey will have interest in recounting that from start to finish. justice tucker, part of that team that broke the story for the ap. thank you. thank you. we turn now to nick ackerman, a former watergate special prosecutor with quite a bit of experience in these kind of cases, which are not the normal kind of case. what jumps out to you about this reporting? i think its not surprising. i would have expected the manafort piece would have been part of this. i would have expected that rod rosenstein would be considered at least a witness in this case. he was part
he is highly respected. a very good guy, very smart guy. the democrats like him. the republicans like him. he made a recommendation. but regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey knowing there was no good time to do it. in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. now, that interview, when you listen to it, it did more than just throw the justice department under the bus. it made the justice department vulnerable at least to an allegation that it was part of an effort to mislead the whole nation about the first firing of an fbi director without cause in american history. that s a big deal. and a lot of that is still reverberating, as you know, within days, rosenstein responded to that by appointing mueller as the special counsel and then he gave a very unusual private briefi to th