raj shah ebof
WH adamant Trump won't fire AG Rod Rosenstein
01:00 - Source: CNN
Washington CNN  — 

White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said there will be “no changes” at the Justice Department when asked about the potential firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“I’m saying it on behalf of the White House, and that’s that no changes are going to be made at the Department of Justice,” Shah said Friday night on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”

“We fully expect Rod Rosenstein to continue on as the deputy attorney general.”

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley made the same case on “Anderson Cooper 360” on Friday night.

When asked if there were conversations about possibly firing Rosenstein, Gidley said: “No, not to my knowledge.”

“It’s been very clear throughout the process in the White House, there are no conversations and no considerations about firing Rod Rosenstein,” Gidley told CNN’s John Berman.

Earlier on Friday, President Donald Trump refused to give a clear-cut answer on whether he was considering firing Rosenstein after Trump approved the declassification of a memo that alleges FBI abuses its authority regarding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.

“You figure that one out,” Trump said, when asked about whether he planned to get rid of Rosenstein.

The memo alleges that Rosenstein approved at least one FISA warrant of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, Rosenstein took on overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into any potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, expressed that he was “very concerned” about the possibility that Trump would fire Rosenstein in an interview earlier on CNN.

“The reason it might be better to fire the boss is Rod Rosenstein sets the investigation,” the California Democrat said. “If he can find his own person, a yes man, and he can tell Bob Mueller, ‘You can’t look into money laundering, you can’t look into this or that,’ that would be a serious way, a surreptitious way to limit this investigation.”

But Shah denied that possibility Friday night.

“Look, on the deputy attorney general, there has been no change in the President’s confidence in the (deputy attorney general). We continue to expect him to fill his role as the deputy attorney general and don’t expect any changes on that front,” Shah said.