Michael Schmidt: ‘The President Has Thought About Getting Rid of Sessions, Rosenstein and Mueller Since Last May’

EXCERPT:

SCHMIDT: “You’re right. This is something that he thinks he has the right to do. Something he has thought a lot about. This is not a new thing. The President has thought about getting rid of sessions, Rosenstein and Mueller since last May when the Special Counsel was announced. Actually, when it happened, the President going immediately to try and get rid of Sessions, Sessions surviving. The biggest question now is maybe not Mueller as much as it is Rosenstein. Rosenstein, someone who Comey had called the ultimate survivor, now once again under the President’s — you know, the President coming after him again, really wanting to get rid of him, seeing him as the person who oversees Mueller. If Trump were able to install someone more loyal to him, that could have a more of an influence over the investigation. That’s the thing that we heard yesterday repeatedly was something the President was looking at here. Look, the President does say a lot of things. And he does get very angry. This incident in December was significant to us because there had been this report that Deutsche Bank had sent subpoenas related directly to the President’s finances. And this sort of looming question over all this, this sort of red line of whether Mueller looked into his finances, he is violating it. This incident showed us how the President reacted to that. And it’s only after the Ppresident learned that the reports weren’t true that he backed down.”