own kind of credibility issues. he is currently under investigation for misleading fbi officials, and he perhaps has reasons for wanting to get back at the justice department, who knows. but it s really if trump was boasting to the russians in the oval office about firing comey and releasing classified information and asking for loyalty pledges, then it does make sense perhaps that rosenstein would be questioning his fitness for office. whether or not he was taking a straw poll, trying to ask cabinet officials whether they thought he should be removed from office. i don t think the new york times has any proof of that. and elie, very briefly because we are never late for rachel around here, the new york times story in your view overwritten or under written? over, over. i don t think that i think that some sarcasm was probably missed. and that could be dangerous in life and in law and in politics, if we don t hear the italics sometimes.
someone in the executive branch without more. yeah. look, this, as we point out in the story, never moved to the point where they did a legal review to make a decision with it. this is something that rosenstein brought up multiple times with fbi officials in this period of time. it wasn t just once. as the justice department has put out this person that was in the room saying it was sarcastic, well, rosenstein brought it up later in the day. as we point out in the story, rosenstein was asked in the meeting whether he was serious about this. and he said that he was. so that contradicts what the justice department had put out and that s why we felt comfortable and moved forward with the story. right. well, and you re getting into the sourcing. i wanted to ask you about that. you have you write several people who were briefed on the events themselves or memos written by fbi officials. besides rosenstein, none of your sources who said rosenstein was serious about the wire were actual
hard to imagine rod rosenstein, who has been a career department of justice official, is a very measured and careful person. he is not an outlandish extremist, that he would actually seriously encourage or consider doing something like this. right. and that brings us, maya, to the wider context. this just doesn t come any old day in the mueller probe, it comes when the people that are most incriminating to donald trump are his own former top people, manafort and michael cohen. and maya, i am reminded of something lil wayne cautioned about, the danger of cautioning witnesses on your own side, yo own people could be them people, even glasses can t help you see them people. and this comes at a time when the president is very upset about his own people, flipping on him. yeah, you know, it s bad when
when he appoints mueller, and obviously that is a huge turn in the story, and something that, you know, i think that rosenstein would say was the right thing to do. right. well, you have on your hands a hotly contested story that a lot of people are taking in a lot of different directions. we want to dig into it with you. i appreciate your spending your time with us, explaining your reporting and process and thinking. michael schmidt with the big story from the new york times. matt miller, stay with me. i want to bring in gabe sherman, reporting breaking tonight that the white house communications director has a media strategy to build public support for, guess what, donald trump to fire rod rosenstein. what are you hearing, gabe? this is obviously something the president has been wanting to do for months now. internal pushback. the new york times story lays a predicate for the president if he indeed wanted to fire rod rosenstein. so a source close to the white house about the me
andy s very much been trying to paint a picture of himself as someone who was fired, retaliated against for political reasons to try to make any kind of indictment as painful a choice as possible for rod rosenstein in the justice department and any trial. you re hitting on something very significant, people may remember that mccabe stepped up to replace comey as acting fbi director. he had a reportedly fight with donald trump over the phone immediately over the treatment of comey and whether he got to take the fbi plane back and then trump privately turned to blast his wife for being a candidate for office to depict her as a hillary stooge and the rest and then ultimately got him run out of the fbi and tainted him as a potential witness in any obstruction probe. you re saying that obviously michael s not going to get into his sources, but you re saying at least the mccabe memo fits into this and has a different agenda? yeah, i m not just basing it on this story. there have been a n