When news broke that Rod Rosenstein had given his verbal resignation to the White House Chief of Staff, news outlets all over the world jumped on this story, including us here at The Duran. The initial breaking story turned out not to be so – and Mr. Rosenstein is still holding the post of Deputy Attorney General. But the day was no less chaotic for him, and although the initial story may be premature, it is still clear that an upheaval is definitely in progress.
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To go over the events since the initial story, this is what we know so far:
- From CNBC: “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will remain in his job at least until Thursday, when he is scheduled to sit down with President Donald Trump to discuss his future at the Justice Department, the White House says.Yet the fact that Rosenstein went to work at the Justice Department at all on Tuesday morning was noteworthy, coming on the heels of a whirlwind 24 hours marked by competing reports that Rosenstein’s firing was imminent, that he had already resigned, and that he planned to resign after being summoned to the White House on Monday.”
- From Wired: “What was already set up to be one of the biggest, most consequential weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency—as the Commander-in-Chief chaired a UN meeting in New York, the Capitol in Washington braced for a showdown over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh—saw the intensity rise to seemingly historic levels by noon Monday, as news outlets raced to report the long anticipated denouement of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.Nevertheless, the momentary firing-that-wasn’t likely marks the postponement of an impending crisis, rather than a permanent escape.
The fall of Rod Rosenstein—the man who in his first weeks in office helped justify the firing of FBI Director James Comey and then appointed Comey’s predecessor, Robert Mueller, to be the special counsel leading the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election—appeared to happen as Ernest Hemingway once said about going bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly.
Gradually, because ultimately it has never seemed a question of if Rosenstein would be fired, but when—and how far along Mueller would be by the time Rosenstein got canned. Reporters across Washington had prewritten “Rosenstein is fired” stories numerous times, as the tensions between the White House and the Justice Department ebbed and flowed over the last two years. (Most recently, The Wall Street Journal had actually sung the praises of the Trump-Rosenstein dynamic: “It’s fantastic,” President Trump said of their relationship in August.) - Fox News’ Howard Kurtz made his comments in this video piece, which also, incidentally, included further reports on the disintegration of the Kavanaugh lynching attempt by Democrats, also covered here on The Duran:
Interestingly enough, Mr. Kurtz notes the Rosenstein media scrabble as “a day of sloppy, and sometimes overreaching, journalism.” This of course is true, as so many outlets jumped on this story. However, unlike the Kavanaugh sexual-abuse fabrication job being orchestrated by Alinsky-acolyte Democrats, the Rosenstein affair at least has some direct connections to reality.
Mr. Rosenstein no doubt raised some eyebrows and hackles at the White House on Friday, when a report from The New York Times claimed that he had once mused over the thought of becoming a human wiretap, meeting with – and recording – President Trump, to give evidence of how unhinged Mr. Trump allegedly was. Further the report claimed that Mr. Rosenstein questioned Donald Trump’s “fitness for office,” a popular soundbite line among Democrats and globalists who seek to unseat the President by the invocation of the 25th Amendment (or any other possible means). CNBC continues:
The report sent shockwaves through the Justice Department and the White House, further straining what was already a messy relationship between the president and his DOJ. Trump has made no attempt to hide his disdain for Sessions, whom the president holds personally responsible for the escalation of the Russia probe. Moreover, it was Rosenstein himself who appointed Robert Mueller to lead the inquiry after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
NBC News reported that Rosenstein and White House Counsel Don McGahn discussed the possibility of his resigning over the Times story, but that Rosenstein made it clear to McGahn that if Trump wanted to fire him, the president would need to speak to him directly about it, face to face.
NBC also reported that sometime over the weekend, Trump decided not to fire Rosenstein after all, in part because of the political firestorm it would ignite, just weeks from the November elections.
On Monday morning, however, the news site Axios incorrectly reported that Rosenstein had “verbally resigned” over the weekend, giving the strong impression that Rosenstein was quitting of his own accord, and that his departure was already a done deal. (Axios, for its part, said Tuesday that its initial report Monday “conveyed too much certainty to a fluid situation by presenting Rosenstein’s resignation as a done deal.”)
Axios and other outlets are now all in sync once again, with the present status being that Mr. Rosenstein is planning to meet with the President on Thursday after his return from New York, where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly. There does appear to be a lot to talk about. However, at this point, all that really remains is to wait.
The MSM is wild with speculation, of course, but at this point the better course is probably just to wait and see what happens.
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