May 18, 2017
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein knew James B. Comey would be fired as director of the FBI before he wrote a scathing memo laying out the case for the move, several senators who attended a closed-door briefing with the former U.S. attorney from Maryland said Thursday.
"He knew that Comey was going to be removed prior to him writing his memo," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and former local prosecutor.
The motivation and timing of Rosenstein's three-page memo has been scrutinized because the White House offered inconsistent explanations for it. At first, the administration said President Donald Trump based his decision on the memo when he fired Comey last week, The memo criticized the FBI's handling of the investigation into a private email server used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump later said he intended to fire Comey regardless of the Justice Department's advice, and that he had the FBI's probe into alleged Russian election interference in mind when he did so. That is likely one of the reasons Rosenstein named a special counsel Wednesday to lead an independent investigation into whether anyone on the Trump campaign cooperated with Russia.
