Donald Trump would love to fire his Deputy Attorney General but Rod Rosenstein is making it impossible for him to do that by outsmarting him at every turn. On Sunday the president demanded a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the FBI spy that he thinks was planted in his presidential campaign, so Rosenstein immediately agreed to do it.
Yesterday Rosenstein and Trump took the game to a new level as they met in person in the White House along with FBI Director Christopher Wray. Rosenstein didn’t speak after the meeting but there is no question that he dodged another bullet because he still has a job.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders issued a statement saying that Rosenstein and the others had gone along with Trump’s demands:
“Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump Campaign. It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested,” Sanders said.
One way this is a win for Rosenstein and the DOJ (and the Mueller investigation) is that Republican congressional leaders will be allowed to review the secret information but will not receive the documents that they had requested. House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, as well as many other GOP leaders, have been calling for the DOJ to turn over classified documents to them for the past few weeks. But now it is clear that in their meeting yesterday Rosenstein talked the president out of that approach.
Rosenstein also won by limiting the scope of the DOJ investigation that Trump had called for in his Sunday tweet. There will be no congressional inquiry led by Nunes or other GOP partisans in Congress. Instead there will be an investigation led by the DOJ’s Inspector General. There is a huge difference between agreeing to a Republican Congressional witch hunt along the lines of Benghazi and a limited DOJ Inspector General probe which will be done professionally, following DOJ guidelines.
There is a very important word used in Rosenstein’s statement responding to Trump’s demands on Sunday. He said “if” anyone did something wrong they need to know about it. “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Rosenstein’s statement said on Sunday.
Sanders also qualified her statement saying they would look into “any irregularities.” These qualifying words differ from Trump’s statements where he seems to assume there WERE irregularities and that somebody definitely DID something wrong.
In other words, Rosenstein has agreed to investigate, but he has not agreed in advance that anybody did anything wrong.
Many Democrats are unhappy with Rosenstein for meeting with Trump and for appearing to give in the president’s unconstitutional demands. However, by giving in, and by meeting with Trump in person to discuss the issues, Rosenstein has won again. Who knows, he may have even been able to ask the president some questions in the White House yesterday — something Robert Mueller has been wanting to do for months.
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