NY Times Claims Deputy Attorney General Wanted to Secretly Tape Trump

21:57 GMT, 21 September 2018

CC BY 2.0 / Jeff Turner / The Mall - Washington DC

The Washington press corps and cable news media went berserk Friday about an anonymously sourced New York Times report stating the US Justice Department’s Rod Rosenstein considered secretly recording his meeting with the president before opting not to.

Sputnik

Rosenstein, the US deputy attorney general, “suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration,” the New York Times reported Friday.

Rosenstein reportedly made the suggestion to former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe, who then wrote it down in a memo, the outlet says it was told by anonymous officials who claimed to have been briefed on the memo. An unnamed DOJ official said Rosenstein did make the remark, but in a sarcastic fashion.

Rosenstein told the newspaper its story was "inaccurate and factually incorrect."

Has fake news struck again? Not in the eyes of Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, who pointed to the report as evidence of Deep State plotters who “would do anything in their power to undermine” his father, President Donald Trump.

— Pink Shirt (@spread_collar) September 21, 2018

Trump Jr fueled speculation the Times story might have been a mere pretext to fire Rosenstein or US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Wheeler takes issue with the Times’ editorial judgement. “The NYT gives far, far greater weight in this story on people who are third-hand from the story than, for example, either Rod Rosenstein himself or a person who was present” Wheeler writes.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented for sources close to Trump, or Trump himself, to bash political appointees like Rosenstein and Sessions. Trump trashed Sessions this week, quipping, "I don’t have an attorney general" — as if to suggest Sessions was more an empty suit than the nation’s top prosecutor.

The NYT report about "chaos" in the administration spurred Washington, DC, reporters like Vox’s Dara Lind to deadpan on Twitter: “Fav if you, too, had a piece you thought was good coming out in the next several hours that no one will read now.”