WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump acknowledged publicly for the first time Friday that he was under investigation in the expanding inquiry into possible Russian influence in the election, and he appeared to attack the integrity of the Justice Department official in charge of leading it.
"I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt," the president wrote on Twitter. He seemed to be referring to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.
The tweet was the first explicit concession by the president that Robert Mueller, the special counsel for the Russia inquiry, had begun examining Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey last month.
And Trump's apparent reference to Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from it, came just hours after a statement from Rosenstein complaining about leaks in the case.
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In the statement, Rosenstein wrote that "Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous 'officials,' particularly when they do not identify the country -- let alone the branch or agency of government -- with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated."
He added: "Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a long-established policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations."
Rosenstein's statement followed two articles by The Washington Post that cited unnamed officials, one saying that Mueller's investigation had widened to include whether Trump committed obstruction of justice, the other that it was looking at financial transactions involving Jared Kushner, the president's adviser and son-in-law. After the statement, the Post updated the Kushner article so that its first sourcing reference was to "U.S. officials."
The statement by the deputy attorney general raised the question of whether Trump or some other White House official had asked him to publicly discredit the reports. Part of the revelations regarding the Russia investigation and the firing of Comey has been that Trump repeatedly pushed top intelligence officials to say in public that Trump was not personally under investigation and that there was no evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russia in its supposed interference in the 2016 election.
But there was some evidence that Rosenstein's motivation may instead have been his own mounting frustration at seeing details of the law enforcement investigation appear nearly daily in the news media.
A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that no one had asked Rosenstein to make the statement and that he acted on his own.
Responding to Trump's statement on Twitter, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said she was "growing increasingly concerned" that Trump might attempt to fire both Mueller and Rosenstein.
"If the president thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening," she said in a statement. "Even his staunchest supporters will balk at such a blatant effort to subvert the law."
The president has said he already made his decision to fire Comey before Rosenstein wrote a memo criticizing the director's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. There is no public statement from special counsel's investigation that Mueller is focusing on the firing of Comey, as opposed to other events like Comey's claim that Trump improperly pressured him to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser.
The president has denied that he has any nefarious ties to Russia and has also disputed that he's attempted to block the investigation into his campaign's possible role in Russia's election-related hacking. It was unclear whether his tweet about being under investigation was based on direct knowledge or new media reports that suggest Mueller is examining whether the president obstructed justice by firing Comey.
Rosenstein has been overseeing the Russia probe since shortly after Sessions recused himself. But Rosenstein, too, may ultimately have to hand off oversight given his role in Trump's decision to fire Comey.
"As the deputy attorney general has said numerous times, if there comes a point when he needs to recuse, he will," said Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior in a statement. "However, nothing has changed."
The statement followed a report by ABC News that Rosenstein had discussed the matter of recusal internally.
Earlier this month, Rosenstein said that "if anything that I did winds up being relevant to his investigation then, as Director Mueller and I discussed, if there's a need from me to recuse, I will." Mueller is a former FBI director.
If Rosenstein were to recuse himself, the task of overseeing the special counsel would fall to the Justice Department's third-highest-ranking official, Rachel Lee Brand.
Order to transition team
Trump's tweets came after the top lawyer for his transition team warned the team's officials to preserve all records and other materials related to the Russia probe. An official of Trump's transition confirmed the lawyer's internal order, which was sent Thursday.
The memo says former transition team members "have a duty to preserve any physical and electronic records that may be related in any way to the subject matter of the pending investigations."
The order from the general counsel for the transition team casts a wide net on documents that could shed light on ties between Trump's presidential campaign and representatives of Russia's government. The order also covers separate inquiries into several key Trump associates including Flynn; campaign adviser Paul Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates; foreign-policy aide Carter Page; and outside adviser Roger Stone.
With the order, the transition team lawyers are indicating that they have reason to believe that the five men's actions are part of investigations by the Justice Department or the House or Senate Intelligence Committees, or will be.
All five of the men named in the memo, except for Gates, had been previously linked to investigations by the FBI or Congress.
Among its other points, the memo also orders that any records be preserved about foreign travel by transition officials or personnel of Trump's presidential campaign.
"With this in mind," the memo said, "please immediately suspend any deletion, modification, overwriting, or other possible destruction of the information described above, including electronic information, and take all reasonable measures to preserve this information."
It directs recipients to turn over relevant documents to the presidential transition team.
The White House has directed questions for details to outside legal counsel, which has not responded.
Vice President Mike Pence has also hired a private lawyer to represent his interests in the expanding probe. Pence headed the Trump transition until Inauguration Day.
Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, also has retained an attorney to represent him. Cohen has worked for Trump since the mid-2000s and was active in the campaign. He has already been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear, Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, Rebecca R. Ruiz, Adam Goldman, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Matthew Rosenberg, Matt Apuzzo and Nick Confessore of The New York Times; by Julie Pace, Jonathan Lemire, Steve Braun, Sadie Gurman, Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Vivian Salama of The Associated Press; and by Sari Horwitz and Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post.
A Section on 06/17/2017