Bannon’s Secret Plan To Save Trump: Fire Rosenstein
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is still in contact with allies and employees of President Trump, is proposing a plan to save the presidency from the probe into Russian election interference by firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller and signed off on the search warrant of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen.
Bannon has also proposed that Trump fire one of his lawyers, Ty Cobb, who has advised cooperating with Mueller.
Bannon confirmed the report to Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green. “They crossed the red line by subpoenaing the Trump org records + doing the raid on Michael Cohen,” Bannon said, according to a tweet by Green. “They’re into dark territory now. So let’s make this political, let’s shift this thing back to Capitol Hill, take the moral high ground.”
Bannon, who frequently clashed with presidential advisors/relatives Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump during his time in the White House, left the White House under disputed circumstances in August.
He quit running the white supremacist-tied website Breitbart in January after the tell-all book “Fire and Fury” quoted him making repeated derogatory remarks about the workings of the Trump White House, and about Kushner and Ivanka Trump. President Trump said soon after that Bannon had “lost his mind.”
“If you say his name in front of the president, it’s not a pretty sight,” a senior administration official told the Post. “The president really goes off about him.”
Nonetheless, Bannon has reportedly continued to strategize with White House aides, Republican politicians and conservative media members who have influence on Trump.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO