Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein wanted to secretly record Trump -- and use it to invoke the 25th Amendment: report

An explosive new report from the New York Times claims that deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had a secret plot to record President Donald Trump saying crazy and irrational things -- and then to expose it to the world in order to justify invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

According to the Times, Rosenstein made the suggestion to record Trump and recruit Cabinet officials to invoke the 25th amendment in the spring of 2017, at the height of White House chaos.

As the Times notes, this was the time when "Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil" and also when "the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide."

Although Rosenstein's plans didn't come to fruition, he reportedly told aides that he thought he could convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-Director of Homeland Security John Kelly to go along with the plan.

However, Rosenstein is strongly disputing the Times' account of these events.

"The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he told the paper in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”