Rod Rosenstein Offers Resignation to John Kelly (Report)

Updated:

It appears that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, just saved President Trump’s bacon.

Rod Rosenstein Offers Resignation

Jonathan Swan of Axios is reporting that Rosenstein offered his resignation to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Swan, who is deeply connected with many Trump W.H. staffers, set the town alight with this reporting:

Rosenstein’s offered resignation is just another piece of the fallout from the New York Times’ stunning revelation on Friday that, back in 2017, Rosenstein reportedly offered to wiretap the President and gather a consensus with Cabinet members to remove Trump from the presidency under the aegis of the 25th Amendment. (RELATED: Report: Rosenstein Discussed Wearing A Wire In Meetings With Trump.)

The Times’ report stated that Rosenstein may have said the comments as a joke, or out of exasperation. It was never confirmed with 100% confidence that Rosenstein was serious about his remarks.

It’s A Trap!

Sean Hannity of Fox News, who is also a close confidant of President Trump, smelled a setup. He warned the President not to take any rash actions, such as handing Rosenstein his walking papers:

Hannity’s argument is simple: We have no idea if Rosenstein was serious about wiretapping the President. We don’t know if he was planning a coup either. The Times could be quoting from false sources.

We do know one thing: If Trump fires Rosenstein, Democrats and liberal reporters will scream bloody murder and label it an act of obstruction of justice. So was the Times trying to goad Trump into making a fatal error? Were they pushing him to fire Rosenstein so they could depict Trump as interfering with the Russia-collusion investigation?

We know President Trump won’t be missing Rosenstein once he resigns. He’s been less than helpful when it comes to providing materials to Trump’s allies in Congress who suspect chicanery by former President Obama’s FBI during the 2016 election. Congressional Republicans have threatened to impeach Rosenstein for his slow-walking of documents to assist the congressional investigation into the Department of Justice’s spying of the Trump campaign. (RELATED: Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis Calls For Rod Rosenstein To Recuse Himself, Threatens Impeachment.)

So, in that sense, good riddance to Rosenstein. By all counts, he was a deep-state operative who wasn’t exactly in the President’s corner.

As of this writing, we still don’t know if Rosenstein will actually resign. Bloomberg reports that while Rosenstein’s resignation is being taken seriously by the White House, it’s not clear that he’s really following through on it.

So here’s the thing: regardless of whether or not Rosenstein resigns, he’s doing President Trump a huge favor.

Rosenstein Is Actually Helping President Trump

If Trump were to fire Rosenstein, it would invite the wrath of an already hostile media. But, more so, it would bring more scrutiny from the Robert Mueller-led Russian-collusion probe. Trump firing Rosenstein could be made into a case of obstruction of justice because Rosenstein is currently overseeing the Russian investigation. Therefore, it’s better for Trump to keep his hands clean and let Rosenstein ride off into that setting sun on his own.

According to The Washington Post, Rosenstein says he hasn’t been pressured to resign. This decision was all of his own doing:

If you need any more proof that the plan to prod Trump into firing Rosenstein in order to bring obstruction of justice charges was baked in, just consider the reaction of Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff. He’s already telling MSNBC that Trump should be required to fire Rosenstein:

Strange, one would think that someone interested in protecting the integrity of the Russia investigation wouldn’t be urging the man in charge of it to resign or be fired in any capacity.

One more thing of note: President Trump’s order to declassify documents related to the DOJ’s actions in 2016 likely has the deep state running scared at this point. We already know the DOJ has demanded Trump delay in releasing the files:

Could this be a reason why the Times only ran with the Rosenstein story now, as opposed to when it happened a year and a half ago? Inquiring minds are wondering…

Regardless, if this was a New York Times scheme to provide the pretext for impeaching Trump for obstruction of justice, Rosenstein may have just saved the Trump presidency by offering to resign himself.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that Rosenstein will remain on the job for now:

By Jim E

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