I think Rosenstein is lacking in character, as evidenced by his bending to the demands of the president to write a memo justifying the firing of James Comey on pretenses. Then I wondered why he appointed Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate the firing of James Comey, among other things, assuming he was trying to mitigate the heat he took for that memo. But maybe felt confident doing it because he knew the report would have to come back through the AG's office where he would have some control over it. At any rate, nothing he's done since has changed my estimation of him.
It’s still unclear whether Rosenstein was ordered to write the memo, as McCabe has claimed, or volunteered to write it—he has said that he stands by it and believes what he wrote. But Rosenstein was distraught that his memo was being used as the justification for Comey’s firing, according to the Times, and reportedly considered wearing a wire in the Oval Office to record the president’s interviews with candidates to replace Comey. Rosenstein also discussed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment against Trump to remove him from office, McCabe told The Atlantic, prompting Trump to tweet that Rosenstein and McCabe were planning a “very illegal act.” Rosenstein said in a statement last year that he never “pursued or authorized” recording the president, and that “any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false.”
In any case, Rosenstein’s involvement in the conversations and events surrounding Comey’s firing made him a key witness in Mueller’s obstruction probe, experts say—and raised immediate and ongoing questions about whether Rosenstein should have continued overseeing the investigation. “It is very odd for someone to be supervising the investigation for which they are a witness, let alone a central witness to the underlying act,” Jed Shugerman, a professor at Fordham Law School, told The Atlantic in an interview.
“It compromises the conclusion that they did not find a criminal act, because it gets Rosenstein off the hook in several ways,” Shugerman added. “It means he’s not a witness anymore, and that he didn’t participate in criminal activity, because there was none.”
The Atlantic
Why the lawyers at the DOJ did not recommend Rosenstein recuse himself from the probe from the start is beyond me. Maybe because Sessions was compromised and recused they didn't want to go any further down the line to find someone to oversee it. Or maybe they did and Rosenstein failed to follow their advice. I can't remember.
Daniel Hemel, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said, “The notion that Rosenstein’s involvement legitimizes the ‘no obstruction’ finding is an idea straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Adding a second conflicted decision maker to the process makes it worse, not better.” (The first “conflicted decision maker” Hemel was referring to is Barr, who wrote an unsolicited 19-page memo to the Justice Department last year, calling Mueller’s obstruction probe “fatally misconceived.” He was then appointed to oversee that probe by its main target—the president.)
[...]
Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania who also served as deputy assistant attorney general under former President Bill Clinton, said, “From the start, Rosenstein has obviously been a witness in the key episode—the Comey firing.” But the bigger question, Litman said, is whether Rosenstein “was enlisted to bolster a very anomalous move” by Barr—namely, his decision to clear Trump of obstruction, despite Mueller’s reluctance to do so.
[...]
Rosenstein was slated to leave the Justice Department in March, but will now stay on indefinitely, according to NBC. The hearings for his replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, are scheduled for later this month.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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