Government

Rod Rosenstein Will Spare Bill Barr The Effort Of Pushing Him Out

The Deputy AG was unlikely to survive any Trump nominee.

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Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty)

Reports today indicate that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will be stepping down from his position, sometime in March. Rosenstein has joined William Ruckelshaus in the category of “the only Deputy Attorneys General most people have ever heard of.” Rosenstein has been overseeing Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election, and his departure brings up concerns for the future of that investigation.

A lot of the non-lawyer reaction to this news is apoplectic; after all, Rosenstein is seen as the only thing standing between Trump and the kill switch on the Mueller investigation. But a lot of the lawyer reaction has been muted, noting that it’s “normal” for Deputy AGs to serve for about two years, and it’s “normal” for an incoming AG to hire his or her own people.

I think both sides are kind of wrong. It’s not normal. Nothing about this administration is normal, so even “normal”-seeming actions take on abnormal significance given the sinking ship of state. Yes, it wouldn’t be a big deal for a Deputy AG to resign after a solid tour of duty. But given that his boss brazenly and desperately has attempted to obstruct the investigation into his campaign’s collusion with Russia — collusion which we now know took place thanks to the rank incompetence of Paul Manafort’s lawyers — Rosenstein leaving is a serious blow to the rule of law.

On the other hand, Rosenstein wasn’t going to survive William Barr anyway. And if Barr isn’t confirmed, then Rosenstein wasn’t going to survive the next guy Trump put up for the position. Getting rid of Rosenstein and the Mueller investigation is likely a prerequisite for anybody who will be Trump’s next attorney general. Stopping this investigation is the only thing that the Department of Justice does that Trump cares about. We can infer that because the last guy, Confederate Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was doing every single God-awful thing a bigoted sociopath like Trump could want the DOJ to do, and Trump still hated him because Sessions wasn’t stopping the Russia probe.

As long as Lindsey Graham, the new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, doesn’t care about protecting the Mueller investigation — and Graham is a sniveling hypocrite who only gets emotional when alleged attempted rapists are denied a promotion — then Rosenstein was toast under whoever got the job.

I’d have preferred Rosenstein stayed and forced Barr to go through the ugly and unpopular process of firing him. But allowing yourself to be set upon by these Trump cronies and Senate Republicans, simply to make them expend the effort, is a lot to ask of any person. Rosenstein saw what they did to Andrew McCabe. He’ll leave gracefully and spare himself another tumble through the Fox and GOP smear machines.

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The Mueller investigation might not be near completion, but it’s nearly over. We’ll get a report on Trump’s obstruction (spoiler, he did). We’ll get a report on Russian collusion (spoiler, it happened). We’ll waste an unknown amount of time worrying about whether Barr will make the full report public, or only a characterization of the report most favorable to Trump. That conversation will end when House Democrats subpoena Mueller and enter his report into the public record.

I think the real open question is whether any of the Trump children get indicted by Mueller before Rosenstein makes his way off-stage.

Rosenstein resigning is bad news. But once Republicans held onto the Senate, they held onto the power to protect Trump from Mueller. There was nothing Rosenstein could do to stop that from happening.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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