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Deputy U.S. Attorney General nominee Rod Rosenstein waits to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee March 7, 2017 in Washington, DC.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rosenstein did sign the memo pinning Comey’s termination on the ousted FBI director’s conduct in the probe into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information last year. White House officials have said it the firing had nothing to do with the FBI’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Comey first revealed publicly in March and includes any possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, and the president said Wednesday that the FBI director “was not doing a good job.” Comey reportedly found out that he had been fired around the time the news broke on television.
The White House claimed Wednesday that Trump’s confidence in ousted FBI Director James Comey had eroded over the last “several months.” Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president did not make the “final decision” to remove Comey until Tuesday — though he considered firing him since he took office in January.
Asked what changed recently about Trump’s confidence in Comey, Sanders partly cited a correction that had to be issued to testimony that the FBI director gave in a congressional hearing last week. That was not included in the memo dated Tuesday in which Rosenstein outlined his recommendation to fire Comey.
