Part 1
Right at the bell on Friday, the Washington Post provided the definitive answer to the question that had been plaguing the nation. To wit:
Rod Rosenstein: Inanimate Lump of Play-Doh or Careerist Poltroon?
(Pro Tip: Both.)
It is impossible to come out of a newspaper story worse than Rosenstein does here. He is now marked as some weird hybrid of L. Patrick Gray and Uriah Heep, with a dollop of Ottoman eunuch in there somewhere. Gaze in awe.
Charles P Pierce
The New York Times had just reported that — in the heated days after James B. Comey was fired as FBI director — the deputy attorney general had suggested wearing a wire to surreptitiously record President Trump. Now Trump, traveling in New York, was on the phone, eager for an explanation.
Rosenstein — who, by one account, had gotten teary-eyed just before the call in a meeting with Trump’s chief of staff — sought to defuse the volatile situation and assure the president he was on his team, according to people familiar with matter. He criticized the Times report, published in late September, and blamed it on former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, whose recollections formed its basis.
WaPo
I wonder if that was the beginning of Trump's hatefulness toward McCabe.
Then he talked about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and told the president he would make sure Trump was treated fairly.
[...]
“I can land the plane.”
Hm?
To keep his job, the deputy attorney general has worked to mollify an often angry Trump, while at the same time protecting the special counsel’s investigation of the president and his campaign.
[...]
In a statement for this article, Rosenstein said: “The only commitment I made to President Trump about the Russia investigation is the same commitment I made to the Congress: so long as I was in charge, it would be conducted appropriately and as expeditiously as possible. Everyone who actually participated in the investigation knows that.”
[...]
“My relationship with the President is not one-dimensional. The Russia investigation represents only a fraction of my work and the work of the Department of Justice. I talk with the President at every opportunity about the great progress we have made and are making at the Department of Justice in achieving the Administration’s law enforcement priorities and protecting American citizens.”
[...]
“One silly question that I get from reporters is, ‘Is it true that you got angry and emotional a few times over the past few years?’ Heck yes! Didn’t you?” Rosenstein said, deviating from his prepared script [in a speech in New York last night].
[...]
[T]he president has been further swayed by Rosenstein’s deference in meetings and other settings.
On multiple occasions, according to people familiar with the matter, Rosenstein told Trump he was not a “target” of Mueller’s investigation — using law enforcement jargon that can refer to people about whom the Justice Department has gathered substantial evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Mueller’s report makes clear that investigators focused on Trump; his attorneys were informed he was a “subject,” a different bureaucratic term meaning his conduct was being investigated.
[...]
Rosenstein also told the president more than once that he agreed Trump was being treated unfairly — though one person familiar with the matter said Rosenstein was probably referring to media coverage rather than the investigation itself.
[...]
In his speech Thursday, Rosenstein launched a blistering attack on the media, an offensive likely to hearten Trump.
“Some of the nonsense that passes for breaking news today would not be worth the paper it was printed on, if anybody bothered to print it,” he said.
He also criticized the Obama administration for not publicizing the “full story” about Russian hacking and social media influence operations and cited a quote from Trump to make a point about the rule of law.
[...]
At the end of Mueller’s probe, though, Rosenstein might have been able to avoid some punches, since the ultimate decisions would be up to Attorney General William P. Barr.
Instead, he leaned in.
In rare public comments in recent weeks, Rosenstein has lauded Barr to Time magazine and derided as “bizarre” allegations that Barr was trying to mislead the public about Mueller’s work by glossing over the most serious findings about Trump’s behavior, as Democrats have argued.
[...]
Defenders of the special counsel’s probe had long viewed Rosenstein as one of the last bastions guarding the investigation. But Barr’s comments, in their view, misrepresented Mueller’s full report and seemed designed to protect the president. And Rosenstein was at least willing to go along with them.
Former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade, who served with Rosenstein when he was a U.S. attorney in the Obama administration, said she considered Rosenstein “honorable.” But she said she was mystified that he would sign on to Barr’s decision that there was not a prosecutable obstruction case against Trump when Mueller pointedly would not say that.
“His name is included in the letter, and he stood by his side at the press conference, so somehow he got on board with that decision,” McQuade said. “It seems really strange to me.”
[...]
“I think Rod’s intentions were largely in the right place, but he was weak too many times when the country needed him to be strong,” said Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration. “He didn’t have to allow the attorney general to use his name in his letter and the press conference, but he has too often been willing to sacrifice his reputation to please people above him.”
[...]
Trump was already incensed at Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia case, and he would soon turn his ire on the deputy attorney general — deriding him as a “Democrat from Baltimore.” Rosenstein had been the U.S. attorney in Maryland during the Obama administration, but he is a Republican and lives in Bethesda, Md., a suburb of Washington.
Conservative allies of the president, led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), pushed Rosenstein to turn over information on the Russia investigation and last April drafted articles of impeachment against him. Meadows and others also privately complained to Trump about his deputy attorney general.
[...]
For his part, Rosenstein publicly fought back, declaring at an event last May that the Justice Department was “not going to be extorted.”
But while he was sparring with Trump’s allies, the deputy attorney general was also maintaining the kind of workplace diplomacy that wins bosses’ favor. He frequently called and wrote letters to White House aides when they were in the news, or when they celebrated their birthday, people familiar with the matter said. He was recently spotted hugging the president’s personal assistant and other aides at the annual Gridiron Club dinner, and on Monday he was photographed at the White House Easter Egg Roll, waiting in line to greet one of the president’s closest advisers, Kellyanne Conway.
Sucking up.
Rosenstein's credibility, such as it ever was, is now completely in tatters. I suspect that his future includes many appearances before many House committees and perhaps, as my pal, Bill Livingston, the Commodore of the Cuyahoga, once put it, riding every ride at Depositionland. The credibility of the Department of Justice is in even worse shape. We're very likely to hear more and more about Rosenstein's relationship with Robert Mueller and his prosecutors, and I suspect that will not be pretty. At least now we know what accounts for Rosenstein's animatronic mien at William Barr's pre-Mueller press conference.
Charles P Pierce
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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