disapproves of. you know, jim, you re exactly right. this would be a momentous move in this investigation. certainly everything changes now, because this could likely become part of the investigation. if in fact what rod rosenstein, people close to him, and people at the department of justice have said, that the idea that he wanted to wire tap someone to record the president or record the president in some secret way was just a joke, if in fact that does come out to be the case and the president is just using this as an excuse to finally fire him, to finally remove him from this investigation, because we know, as you said, that the president has attacked rod rosenstein in tweets, privately has attacked rod rosenstein, and perhaps has been looking for this excuse to finally take some kind of action in this investigation against someone who is investigating his actions, the russians, his campaign. this could finally sort of
mueller, and they ll want to do a professional job to make sure that they oversee the investigation but not do something reckless or something overtly political. but on paper, they will be in charge of it for purposes of that investigation, they will be the attorney general. and if they re so inclined, they could end it at that point or direct it to be resolved in a way that may be more politically expedient for the president. they ll be able to do that. the question is what kind of person does the president put in there. laura jarrett, i believe we have laura with us. we don t have laura. shimon, back to you. are you getting any reporting on the president s state of mind at this point, and also, who he may have in mind to name? because again, the solicitor general would oversee this probe for now, but then you would assume the president would take up the opening he has legally under the federal vacancies act to name the person he sees best fit here. right. no, we don t have any id
deputy attorney general rod rosenstein believes he is about to be fired at any moment. what are you hearing from your sources? that s what we re hearing from the justice side. i have confirmed with a senior justice official that he did resign to the chief of staff, john kelly. it s unclear when, but it is confirmed he did tell john kelly he is going to resign. of course, that is with that expectations, as laura jarrett was reporting and shimon there, he expected to be fired after the bombshell new york times story broke, that he had considered wearing a wire to go speak with the president, having other people wear a wire to go speak with the president, and in an attempt to encourage some people to invoke the 25th amendment to forcibly remove the president from office. we know that is something that rod rosenstein has denied emphatically. we saw two statements come out last week. the first statement to the new york times where he said he wouldn t be commenting further on this matt
rosenstein had improved in recent months. the president stopped tweeting about him, stopped attacking him on twitter. he s at the white house frequently, briefing the president on one thing or consulting with him on another, especially with regards to the requests with the declassified documents which president trump backed up on last week and said he was no longer going to have them do that. so the thing is, this is all when it took place last year, right around the firing of james comey. that was when apparently rod rosenstein was having these conversations about wearing a wire to meet the president or invoking the 25th amendment. that was one of the most chaotic times surrounding the trump administration and that contributed a lot to the bad relationship and the bad blood between trump and rosenstein at that time. not on the same level as it was between him and the actual attorney general, jeff sessions, but it was jeff sessions who recommended the president pick rod rosenstein as h
perhaps may have given him that excuse to go ahead and do so, but if in fact it is shown that this was all a joke and not as has been reported, that could potentially be a problem as well for the president. this is significant. certainly, something that we had all heard the president wanted to do. his aides, people close to him, have talked about sort of telling him not to do it, listening, and all of a sudden today, this morning, we have this massive huge development in this investigation and something that the department of justice has been concerned about and has been trying to protect rod rosenstein from happening. so we ll see. we ll see where this goes the rest of the day. and then we ll see what happens in terms of this investigation and how this investigation moves forward. all right, let s go to kaitlan collins, our white house reporter with more on this breaking news. i believe you have new reporting on this. the breaking news is that the