Like a scene in a cowboy movie, a bar brawl burst from behind closed doors on Friday and spilled into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead of a saloon, the venue for this fistfight was Justice Department headquarters.
Unlike an old-school dust-up, however, not all the identities of the combatants are obvious.
Somebody, for some reason, wanted The New York Times — and the world — to know about a conversation early in the tenure of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about President Trump, the FBI and the Russia investigation.
Per the Times' initial take, Rosenstein said he wanted to secretly record Trump.
But when the follow-up takes appeared, their accounts made it sound as if Rosenstein said something more like this: Whaddaya wanna do, go see Trump and wear a wire!?
Get the Exclusive
04.29.2025