What Exactly Just Happened?

Rod Rosenstein has apparently not resigned or been fired and is continuing in his role as Deputy Attorney General. He is scheduled to meet with Trump on Thursday. So what exactly happened this morning? I expect that we won’t know the entire story until history is written a few years from now. But there are some reasonable explanations that are reinforced by Trump’s prior actions.

There is obviously a group, either inside the White House and/or well-connected outside the building, that wants Sessions, Rosenstein, and presumably Mueller gone. Sessions’ departure after the midterms is almost accepted as a fait accompli right now. The leak regarding Rosenstein’s discussions of wearing a wire and the 25th Amendment was presumably part of this cabal’s plan to undermine Rosenstein and perhaps get him to resign and/or lay the groundwork for his firing. Whether Trump was on board with this plan is unclear but it would fit his modus operandi to not be around when an important member of his administration was fired or forced to resign.

There is no getting around the fact that multiple sources within the White House expected Rosenstein either to resign or get fired when he came to the White House this morning. The leaking of his willingness to resign may have actually been designed to force the resignation itself. But apparently Rosenstein had no intention of resigning and seems to have expected he would be fired when he arrived at the White House. When Rosenstein refused to resign, the White House apparently couldn’t pull the trigger and fire him. Whether that is because Kelly refused to follow the President’s instructions to do so or whether Trump was actually talked out of this action by other advisers is something we probably won’t know soon. But it is clear that the White House backed down from firing Rosenstein and, for the moment, he remains in place.

But the brouhaha over Rosenstein today and the fact that he will meet with the President on Thursday also highlights another element that may be in play here, namely the Kavanaugh confirmation. According to Gabriel Sherman, Trump’s “The strategy was to try and do something really big” in order to distract from the cratering Kavanaugh nomination. This was especially important after a second, potentially third, and now possibly fourth witness came forward with stories about Kavanaugh’s sexual abuse in his younger days. Certainly, the Rosenstein non-event managed to dominate the news this morning and take much of the focus off the accusation by Deborah Ramirez.

Additionally, Thursday’s meeting between Rosenstein and the President will take some of the focus away from the expected testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. In another move that will slightly minimize the impact of that testimony, Seung Min Kim is reporting that the hearing will be held in an extremely small hearing room where only about two dozen members of the press will be allowed in. Presumably, this is being done to honor Ford’s request not to turn the hearing into a media circus.

All of this is classic Trump modus operandi. Creating outrage and media events in order to deflect from serious charges is a Trump specialty. So is not having the guts to fire anyone directly, leaving it instead to one of his subordinates. Down the road, I expect we will find out that this is what happened today.

Importantly, however, that does not mean that Rosenstein is in any way safe. Rather, what happened today may simply be looked upon as an abortive trial run for when Rosenstein and Sessions are forced to leave after the midterms.