WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was so incensed by the FBI’s raid of his personal attorney’s office and hotel room that he’s privately pondered firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and publicly mused about ousting special counsel Robert Mueller.
The raid, in which agents seized attorney Michael Cohen’s records on topics including a $130,000 payment to a porn actress who alleges she had sex with Trump, left the president more angry than advisers had seen him in weeks, according to five people familiar with the president’s views but not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Trump tweeted Tuesday that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” Nervous White House aides expressed new fears about the president’s unpredictability in the face of the Cohen raid, which he viewed as an assault on a longtime defender and a sign that Mueller’s probe into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign was “going too far.”
Trump also announced Tuesday he was cancelling plans to attend the Summit of the Americas over the weekend as well as an overnight visit to Colombia.
The president had been telling confidants for weeks that he was not eager to make the three-day trip, which had already been shortened from original plans, according to two people who have discussed it with him in recent weeks but were not authorized to disclose the private conversations. His decision not to travel was publicly tied to the need to monitor the situation in Syria, but privately Trump said he didn’t want to be away from the White House amid developments in the China trade dispute and in the Mueller investigation.
