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Donald Trump Jr.
- Donald Trump Jr. blasted Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a Friday tweet.
- The tweet was in a response to a New York Times article reporting Rosenstein had discussed removing President Donald Trump from office and secretly recording him in spring 2017.
- Rosenstein oversees the special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, a frequent of target of Trump and his son Donald Jr.'s ire.
It didn't take long for Donald Trump Jr. to fan the flames of the ongoing conflict between the White House and Department of Justice after an explosive New York Times article came out on Friday.
The Times reported that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein had discussed removing his father, President Donald Trump, from office and secretly recording him, citing sources in the Department of Justice and FBI who were present in Rosenstein's conversations or briefed on memos about them.
"Shocked!!! Absolutely Shocked!!! Ohhh, who are we kidding at this point? No one is shocked that these guys would do anything in their power to undermine @realdonaldtrump," Donald Jr. wrote on Twitter.
In multiple conversations and meetings with other DOJ and FBI officials, Rosenstein reportedly floated enlisting Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House chief of staff John Kelly in an effort to invoke the 25th amendment of the Constitution to remove Trump from office, as well as surreptitiously recording Trump.
In a statement to The Times, Rosenstein called the story "inaccurate and factually incorrect."
Trump and his allies have long been in conflict with Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign illegally conspired with Russia to influence the race in Trump's favor.
Donald Jr. has largely echoed his father's criticisms that the probe is a rigged "witch hunt", accusing the DOJ of being corrupt and biased against the administration. He himself is a central figure in the Mueller probe due to his role in a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lobbyist who offered the Trump campaign damaging information on Trump's Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
The president's eldest son later tweeted: "We likely have a winner in the search for 'anonymous.' Anything to subvert a president who is actually getting things done for America... for a change," referring to the anonymous senior official who wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing Trump earlier this month.
He also re-tweeted messages from Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina encouraging the DOJ to hand over to Congress former FBI Director Andrew McCabe' memos, which the Times cites as a major source for their story.
Earlier this summer, Jordan and Meadows were part of a group of lawmakers who led an ultimately unsuccessful effort to impeach Rosenstein.