During a meeting at the White House last Thursday, deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly assured President Donald Trump that he was not the target of the special counsel’s Russia probe or the investigation into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
That offering was enough to make Trump back off of Rosenstein, who he’s been fixed on firing for months, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
According to several people familiar with the discussion who spoke to Bloomberg, Rosenstein brought up the investigations himself during the meeting. After the discussion, Trump reportedly told his close advisers that “it’s not right” to remove either Rosenstein or special counsel Robert Mueller because he’s not the subject of their investigations, according to Bloomberg. One source told Bloomberg that Trump said he didn’t want to do anything that would make the investigation last longer.
Trump has become increasingly irked with Mueller and Rosenstein in recent weeks, particularly after the FBI raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel last week, calling the seizure of Cohen’s records an “attack on our country.” While that raid was approved by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, it was conducted based on a referral from Mueller’s team.
