in advance of the comey book, or what everyone thought in advance of it, the republican national committee launched a website aimed at what seems is besmirching him. on top of that, cnn has learned that the white house is gearing up for war against deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. sara murray has the exclusive. so, what have you learned about these talking points? >> reporter: well, anderson, sources familiar with this say there was at least a preliminary plan that the white house was developing to try to discredit rod rosenstein, and of course, this comings at a time when president trump has been weighing whether or not he wants to fire his deputy attorney general in the wake of these raids against michael cohen. now, they've come up with a couple of different lines of attack against roden stein. the broad idea is that he's too conflicted to oversee the russia investigation. the notion that rosenstein was