Rod Rosenstein denies that he proposed taping Trump or invoking the 25th

Rod Rosenstein denies that he proposed taping Trump or invoking the 25th

The NY Times “cited several people, who were not named, who described the episodes that came in the spring of 2017 after FBI Director James Comey was fired. The newspaper’s sources also included people who were briefed on memos written by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.”

I’m not sure how much of this is subterfuge leaked by some pro-Trump people to the Times. With Cohen and Manafort singing like canaries, the President is running out of insulation, and desperately needs something to discredit the investigation.

But …

I think there may be at least some truth to the accusation, even though Rosenstein denies it. One great flaw in America’s legal process is that the President is theoretically in charge of investigating himself, because the FBI is the highly trained investigative arm of government, but the director of that agency, as a member of the executive branch, ultimately reports to the President. So when an FBI team is investigating a President suspected of corruption or other criminal activity, just how can it go about that in a way that produces a case “beyond a reasonable doubt”? Very tricky situation. I’m inclined to believe that the investigators would want to record their conversations with him.

If I were a main official of the FBI under a President who was suspected of being both corrupt and a pathological liar, I would absolutely insist on having recordings of all conversations with him, since (1) he is bound to suggest something corrupt and (2) he will deny making that suggestion.

The Flynn case provided examples of both (1) and (2). It must have been apparent to all in the Bureau that their standard practice of making contemporaneous notes of a conversation was insufficient to meet the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” in the light of Trump’s denials. Trump just claimed that Comey faked the notes. While that is unlikely, the fact remains that even contemporaneous notes ultimately fail to resolve the “he said – he said” impasse, and in a court of law, many jurors could easily believe Trump’s denials. On the other hand, untampered and unedited recordings are almost impossible to dispute. Notice how quickly everyone stopped denying Omarosa’s claims once a few deniers were exposed as liars by recordings. Everyone else shut up when they realized she had taped everything. I can see how the FBI might have felt such a thing was necessary when dealing with Trump, and I would doubt any claims that they never discussed the possibility.