Former Department of Justice official Matt Miller told MSNBC on Monday that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's decision to write the memo firing FBI Director James Comey threw the DOJ into "open revolt", which led to him offering to wear a wire to record President Donald Trump in an aborted plan to remove the president using the 25th Amendment.
Miller's remark came during a larger discussion of the FBI's investigation into President Donald Trump after fellow guest, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, argued that Rosenstein had done nothing wrong by trying to "find out the truth" after the president "appear[ed] to be falling within the orbit of a foreign leader."
Miller agreed, and added that Trump had made Rosenstein look so bad to his DOJ and FBI staff, he was practically forced to go to extreme lengths.
"He'd only been on the position two weeks or so when he wrote that memo justifying Comey's firing," Miller said. "He didn't know how it was going to blow up in his face."
Rosenstein "succumbed to pressure put on him by the president," Miller went on, saying the resulting outcry had badly damaged the deputy attorney general. "He found his reputation was being destroyed, he found that the career people at the Justice Department and the FBI were in open rebellion against him for writing the memo."
"I think that's why he was talking about the 25th Amendment, I think that's why he made the suggestion, which is really really aggressive, to potentially wear a wire into the Oval Office," he continued, saying Rosenstein appointed Mueller because he was trying to put both the Justice Department and "his own personal reputation on the right foot."
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