The meeting between President Trump and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — which many feared would lead to an ouster of the Justice Department’s No. 2 official — has been delayed yet again.
“We spoke and that’s moving along nicely, but I don’t want to interrupt what’s going on with Judge Kavanaugh. I don’t want to do anything to interrupt what’s happening with Judge Kavanaugh,” Trump told reporters Tuesday when asked about Rosenstein.
A meeting was delayed last week in which the two were slated to discuss a report that said Rosenstein, in 2017, mentioned secretly recording Trump in an effort to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from the presidency.
Immediately after the report, Rosenstein told senior White House advisers that he was considering resignation and he then went to a White House meeting expecting to be fired.
[More: Republicans to call Rosenstein for private meeting on Trump coup]
After the meeting took place, which the president himself did not attend, Trump said at a news conference at the United Nations that he would “certainly prefer not” firing Rosenstein.
Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference and possible connections to the Trump campaign.
Trump delayed last week's planned meeting in order to focus on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Brett Kavanaugh, his nominee to the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault while in high school, both testified on Capitol Hill.
On Friday, after Kavanaugh was voted favorably out of the committee, Trump directed the FBI to conduct a weeklong supplemental background investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against Kavanaugh.