The New York Times has an extended look at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and his role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Mr. Rosenstein, sworn in on April 26, could hardly have predicted the speed at which he would become embroiled in a high-stakes drama at the uppermost echelons of government. In the past two weeks, he has been saddled with a leading role in the firing of an F.B.I. director, called to answer for the shifting explanations of a White House in chaos and ultimately moved to name a special counsel now investigating the president himself.
That Rosenstein appointed a special counsel isn’t just a good thing, it was a move that may have headed off a crippling schism within the government. However, that doesn’t make Rosenstein’s fight to reach “neutral ground” admirable nor make his role in the central crisis that necessitated that counsel any more acceptable.
Mr. Rosenstein knew Mr. Comey was to be ousted before he ever sat down to write his memo, he has told lawmakers. Soon after Mr. Comey’s sudden dismissal on May 9, Mr. Trump and aides began offering varying explanations, with the president admitting within days that he had made the decision himself, as he fumed about the investigation Mr. Comey was leading into his campaign’s ties with Russia.
In being asked to provide a cover for Trump’s firing of the FBI director, Rosenstein was placed in a tough position, one that speaks directly to the years he’s spent building a career. But in delivering the requested report, Rosenstein became an active participant in Trump’s actions.
And in providing a report he knew in advance served no purpose other than to act as deceptive cover for Trump, Rosenstein definitively placed himself inside the cover-up.
For twenty-four hours following Comey’s firing, Rosenstein was painted as not just involved, but the instigator of the dismissal. Trump surrogates up and down the line, including Sean Spicer, indicated that Rosenstein, along with Jeff Sessions, had approached Trump because of Rosenstein’s concerns over Comey’s actions. Trump had then asked the deputy AG to put these concerns in writing, at which point Rosenstein created his two-page “report” on Comey’s frequent overreach during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. As it was presented, Trump only fired Comey because Rosenstein recommended that move.
This view, unbelievable as it was from the outset, was pressed by the Trump regime right up until the moment when Trump, in an interview with Lester Holt, bragged that he had already made the decision to fire Comey. That information reversed the previous narrative.
It wasn’t that Rosenstein and Sessions prevailed on Trump to fire the FBI director over his past mistakes with the email investigation. It was that Trump determined to dismiss Comey because of the active and ongoing investigation into collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
Behind-the-scenes commentary suggested that Rosenstein was unhappy about the way in which he was being portrayed as the motive force in Comey’s firing. But that unhappiness stayed very pointedly behind the scenes. While Spicer and Conway and a host of Trump surrogates were spreading the story that depicted Trump as the apolitical follower of advice from a deputy AG that had been working on this report “for weeks,” Rosenstein made no public statement to counter a narrative he knew to be false.
The actual course of events, now stated openly, is that Trump had already made up his mind to fire Comey. However, Trump realized that taking that action in the midst of an investigation might seem more than a little beyond the pale. So he called in Rosenstein with the intent of collecting an excuse to make that firing more palatable.
- Rosenstein knew that Trump intended to fire Comey.
- He knew that the report he was writing was intended to provide cover for Trump’s action.
- He did not object publicly to being named as the instigator of Comey’s firing.
Providing false information for the purpose of deception is the absolute definition of a cover-up. Rod Rosenstein may have been fresh in his job, but he is not political naif. He’s an experienced US attorney who apparently decided to place getting along with the new boss in a higher position than upholding the truth.
That may be “seeking neutral ground.” It’s also cowardice.