White House says Rosenstein not fired yet

WASHINGTON—Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remains on payroll at the Justice Department despite a firestorm of media reports speculating Monday that he would resign or be fired. On Monday morning, journalists reported Rosenstein had verbally resigned to White House chief of staff John Kelly. Others said Rosenstein was on his way to the White House in anticipation of being fired. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Rosenstein talked with President Donald Trump about “recent news stories” and that the conversation had been at Rosenstein’s request.

Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 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.”

At a political rally in Missouri that Friday night, the president blasted the Department of Justice and the FBI for bias against him and implied that he expected more staff turnover: “The bad ones, they’re all gone,” the president said. “But there is a lingering stench and we’re going to get rid of that, too.”

Sanders said Trump, who is currently at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, will meet in person with Rosenstein on Thursday.