Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has “verbally resigned” his position in the Department of Justice, effective Monday, according to reports from Axios and others.
Chief of Staff John Kelly has reportedly accepted Rosenstein’s resignation.
Sources close to Rosenstein told the national security publication that Rosenstein was “expecting to be fired” following a New York Times report from last week detailing conversations Rosenstein allegedly had with other administration officials in which he suggested recording conversations with President Donald Trump and proposed “recruiting Cabinet members” to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
Rosenstein disputed The New York Times’s story, blaming anonymous sources looking to assail his character for the “inaccurate and factually incorrect” allegations. He also denied that there is any reason to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows the Cabinet to replace the President if he is unfit to serve.
Trump told a radio station Monday morning that he had not yet examined The New York Times report but that he had not ruled out firing Rosenstein.
“I haven’t gotten all the facts, but certainly it’s being looked at in terms of what took place,” Trump said. “If anything took place and I’ll make a determination sometime later, but I don’t have the facts.”
Monday morning, multiple reports indicated that Rosenstein was headed to the White House expecting to be terminated, but President Trump is in New York City, preparing to speak to the United Nations General Assembly.
Rosenstein, of course, was responsible for overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russian officials to alter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. That job will now likely fall to Solicitor General Noel Francisco.