Trump delays meeting with Rosenstein

Not wanting to interfere with the ongoing confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump postponed his meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday. Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After a week of rumors that Rosenstein would either resign or be fired, the president said Thursday that he wants to allow him to keep working.

Trump has spoken with Rosenstein over the phone and has tried to allay concerns that he would be fired, saying, “My preference would be to keep him and to let him finish up.”

The embattled deputy attorney general came under a cloud of controversy after The New York Times reported Friday that in 2017 Rosenstein suggested secretly recording Trump and using the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to declare Trump unfit for office and remove him. Rosenstein called the report “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” He later said “any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the president is absolutely false.”