After chaotic day, Rosenstein stays in job but will meet with Trump

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President Donald Trump and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, will meet on Thursday to discuss whether Rosenstein will stay in his job.

Rosenstein had spent the weekend contemplating whether he should resign after a New York Times report last week said he had suggested secretly recording Trump in 2017, a source told Reuters.

The White House announced the meeting on Monday after a flurry of conflicting media reports about whether Rosenstein, a frequent target of Trump’s anger, would be leaving the post.

“At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter.

The Rosenstein furor, kicked off by unconfirmed reports that he had verbally resigned, underscored the mounting tension in the White House over the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

There had been widespread speculation that Trump would fire Rosenstein since Friday when a New York Times report said that in 2017 Rosenstein had suggested secretly recording the president and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke a constitutional amendment to remove him from office.

The Times said none of those proposals came to fruition. Rosenstein denied the report as “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” – READ MORE

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Jonathan Swan, the Axios reporter who initially broke the news this morning that Rod Rosenstein had “verbally resigned” and subsequently triggered a drop in the Dow that erased billions of dollars in value, has issued an important “clarification” that – as fate would have it – changes the story from a major news-cycle-dominating revelation to a barely noteworthy tidbit.

After sparring with Vanity Fair reporter Gabriel Sherman, who suggested that Swan “got played” by a White House insider looking to distract from the second Kavanaugh revelation, Swan has admitted that the phrasing of his initial report was a little off. Instead of reporting that Rosenstein had “verbally resigned”, Swan said he meant to say that Rosenstein had verbally offered his resignation to Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Note for readers: I regret the way I wrote this morning’s version of the story. By saying Rosenstein had “verbally resigned” to Kelly rather than “offered his resignation,” I conveyed a certainty that this fluid situation didn’t deserve. It’s an important nuance, and I regret the wording.

We’re sure all of those algos that sold on the headline also “regret” their error, too.- READ MORE

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