People close to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he likely made the comments described in the New York Times report in jest. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo Justice Department DOJ's Rosenstein, allies deny he considered secretly recording Trump A Justice Department official said the news would have no bearing on Rosenstein's supervision of Mueller's probe.

Rod Rosenstein and his allies furiously pushed back Friday against a bombshell New York Times report that the deputy attorney general considered wearing a wire to record President Donald Trump during a tumultuous period last year after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

According to the report, Rosenstein was upset when Trump used a memo he'd written to justify firing Comey, and the deputy attorney general also suggested recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment process to remove the president.


Rosenstein dismissed the report as "inaccurate and factually incorrect," while his allies — including some who heard the comments in question — insisted they were made in jest.

"I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda," Rosenstein said in a statement. "But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

Apparently buffeted by criticism that his earlier denial was too vague, Rosenstein later Friday issued a more strident statement, saying: "I never pursued or authorized recording the President and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false."

The report, however, is sure to fuel calls by Trump's Republican allies to oust Rosenstein. They have accused him of slow-walking their investigation of FBI agents they believe are biased against Trump, although Democrats say their GOP counterparts are merely trying to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller, who reports to Rosenstein on his probe into Russian election interference and whether the Trump campaign aided the Kremlin.

A Justice Department official said Friday's news would have no bearing on Rosenstein's supervision of Mueller's probe.

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Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, who is one of the the 47 people Trump is following on Twitter, said Rosenstein should be fired shortly after the news broke.

"Rod Rosenstein must be fired today," Ingraham tweeted at Trump's Twitter handle (she later deleted the tweet).

Donald Trump Jr. speculated on Twitter that the story indicated Rosenstein was the anonymous senior Trump administration official who wrote a recent New York Times op-ed describing an attempt within the administration to restrain the president's worst impulses.

"We likely have a winner in the search for “anonymous.” Anything to subvert a president who is actually getting things done for America... for a change.

President Trump, speaking at a Missouri rally Friday evening, referred to "a lingering stench" at the Department of Justice, adding "we're going to get rid of that, too."

On Capitol Hill, though, Trump's closest allies were noticeably tempered in their initial reaction.

As of Friday night, the White House had not yet issued a statement. But one Republican close to the White House said officials there have known about the story for the last 24 hours.

"They’ll have to evaluate the whole thing — do they believe him or not?” Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told POLITICO, adding, "I don't know" when asked if Trump would fire Rosenstein over the article.

"We deliberately decided to stay out of it," said Giuliani, who leads the team of lawyers defending Trump in the Mueller probe. "This doesn’t have anything to do with us."

Meanwhile, Democrats implored the president not to go after Rosenstein over the story.

“This story must not be used as a pretext for the corrupt purpose of firing Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein in order install an official who will allow the president to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned in a statement, noting that White House chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis "have been reported to say critical things of the president without being fired.”

People close to Rosenstein said he likely made the comments described in the report in jest. One person who was in the room when Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire to record Trump said the remark was "sarcastic."

"I remember this meeting and remember the wire comment. The statement was sarcastic and was never discussed with any intention of recording a conversation with the president," the person said.

A former Justice Department official added: "Knowing Rod, the two big pieces of that story just don't add up." The former official said Rosenstein would've recognized the math of invoking the 25th Amendment — requiring a majority of the Cabinet, the vice president and majorities in Congress — would've been virtually impossible.

“I know him enough to know that he knows the 25th Amendment is about incapacity," added James Trusty, a former senior DOJ official and friend of Rosenstein’s. "It’s not, ‘I don’t like the president. He’s treating me badly. It would not be even remotely in his mind as an option.”

Still, if the Times story if true, it signals that the deputy attorney general “had an anemic level of confidence in the honesty and integrity of the president," said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor from Virginia who previously worked with Rosenstein.

“For the second most important Justice official to offer to record a conversation of the leader of the free world is simply stunning,” Rossi added.

The New York Times cited people who were briefed either on the meetings or on memos by FBI officials, including former bureau Acting Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired earlier this year.

Michael Bromwich, McCabe's lawyer, said he gave all his memos to Mueller's team. Mueller's spokesman said the special counsel's office is declining comment "at this time."

"A set of those memos remained at the FBI at the time of his departure in late January 2018," Bromwich said, without commenting on what the memos said. "He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos."

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of Rosenstein's fiercest critics in Congress and who has endorsed a measure to impeach him, said Friday afternoon that he's still trying to understand the facts of the story. He said the conflict underscores Congress' need to access McCabe's memos — which he said the Justice Department and FBI have denied lawmakers for months.

"I want to see those memos and evaluate them," he said in a phone interview.

Jordan, who has clashed publicly with Rosenstein over access to internal agency documents, was notably more muted about the explosive allegations in the Times story.

Outside observers raced to assess the importance of a story with anonymous sourcing and the Rosenstein denial.

“Rod should be heard on it,” said a former senior Justice Department official familiar with the wider Russia investigation that Rosenstein oversees. “There’s some question whether those words were said in jest.”

But the former DOJ official, like several others interviewed Friday, predicted Trump could nonetheless jump at the story as a way to seal Rosenstein’s fate.

“He’s hated the New York Times. Now I can see the president saying, 'the New York Times got it right,'” the former DOJ official said.

William Jeffress, a prominent Washington defense attorney who represented President Richard Nixon after he left the White House, said the Times’ sourcing looked to him like “persons who wish to do Rosenstein harm.”

“Are the president’s allies laying a basis for the president to insist that Rosenstein be fired? My gut says, 'yes,'” Jeffress said.

If Rosenstein is ousted, Jeffress said the implications for the Mueller probe are "unknowable at this point, and would depend on whether he is replaced by someone like Rosenstein whose first loyalty is to the integrity of the system of justice, or whose first loyalty is to President Trump.”

Considering Trump’s longstanding animus toward Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rossi, the former federal prosecutor who worked with Rosenstein, predicted both top DOJ officials are likely to get fired after the November midterms.

But Rossi said the political consequences for Trump if he pushed for Mueller’s ouster would be dire.

“If the president then tries to shut down the Mueller probe after the slips are served, then there will be a clarion call for impeachment that will shake the earth,” he said.

Trusty, the Rosenstein friend who used to work at DOJ, agreed.

“If anyone thinks it’s a magic bullet, Rod’s gone, we’re done, it’s not accurate,” he said.

Mueller’s probe, now into its 16th month, has netted guilty pleas from former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and the former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The investigation has no deadline, though former FBI Director James Comey earlier this week told St. Louis Public Radio that Manafort's plea, which included a cooperation agreement with Mueller's team, “may represent that we’re in the fourth quarter.”

Former federal prosecutor David Weinstein cautioned that firing Rosenstein may change that timeline.

“A change in supervisors could actually prolong things,” he said.

Still others found reason for skepticism about the Times’ reporting.

"This story sounds more like fiction than fact,” said Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor who reported to Mueller when he served in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of California. “The Trump team has a strong incentive to change the narrative right now and they are certainly not above leaking false information.”

She added that she’d “need more proof that it’s true” before commenting on the implications.

Josh Gerstein, Rebecca Morin and Nancy Cook contributed to this report.