JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, headed to the White House on Monday [9-24-18] morning, he was ready to resign and convinced — wrongly, it turned out — that President Trump was about to fire him. Top Justice Department aides scrambled to draft a statement about who would succeed him. By the afternoon, Mr. Rosenstein was back at his Pennsylvania Avenue office seven blocks away, still employed as the second-in-command at the Justice Department and, for the time being at least, still in charge of the Russia investigation. What happened in between was a confusing drama in which buzzy news reports of Mr. Rosenstein’s imminent departure set in motion a dash to the White House, an offer to resign, Capitol Hill speculation about Mr. Rosenstein’s successor and, finally, a reprieve from an out-of-town president…Even for an administration famous for chaos and rival factions, Monday’s events offered a remarkable display of the anxiety gripping the Trump administration after a New York Times report on Friday said that Mr. Rosenstein had considered secretly taping the president and had discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.”
–Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, “Rod Rosenstein’s Job Is Safe, for Now: Inside His Dramatic Day,” The New York Times online, September 24, 2018