Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation was no “witch hunt,” but he is reserving judgment on the origins of the Russia matter.
Whether the FBI had a legitimate basis in the summer of 2016 to open its inquiry into alleged ties between former President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia will be determined by special counsel John Durham, the former federal prosecutor said in a new interview.
“I think we should wait and see,” Rosenstein said after noting that the FBI’s investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, began before he made the jump from being U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland to deputy attorney general in the spring of 2016.
“Hopefully, we’ll have the results of that investigation soon, and so we’ll know whether there was a legitimate basis to initiate the investigation, but I think we should all wait for the results of that matter,” he told Kim Wehle, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, during an episode of her #SimplePolitics podcast published on Sunday.
Durham, a now-former U.S. attorney from Connecticut, was appointed to begin his politically charged investigation in the spring of 2019 by Attorney General William Barr. The federal prosecutor was tasked with investigating the origins and conduct of the FBI’s inquiry into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Although Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in December 2019 that Crossfire Hurricane was “opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication,” Durham, along with Barr, disagreed with the assertion that the opening of the investigation was justified.
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Rosenstein distanced himself from the FBI’s work prior to the time he became deputy attorney general. “I knew nothing about it other than what I read in the newspaper,” he said.
Crossfire Hurricane was wrapped into Mueller’s special counsel investigation in the spring of 2017. Rosenstein appointed Mueller to the role shortly after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, citing a memo Rosenstein wrote at his request, which focused on the “mistakes” Comey made in handling the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized email server, and an accompanying letter from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Rosenstein said he appointed Mueller “because I believe it was important to promote public confidence in the independence and the outcome of that investigation of Russian election interference.”
A 448-page report showed Mueller and his special counsel team concluded that Russia interfered in 2016 in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s campaign.
Still, Mueller’s investigation was dubbed a “witch hunt” by Trump and his allies, an evaluation that Rosenstein argued was unwarranted.
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“From my perspective, it was not a witch hunt. It was never a witch hunt. Bob Mueller doesn’t do witch hunts,” he said. “That was the criticism that came from the Right during the investigation, but I don’t believe that’s fair in the way the investigation was conducted.”
Democrats have long criticized Barr, who assumed control of the Justice Department in February 2019, for preceding the release of Mueller’s report with a letter of “principal conclusions” in which he and Rosenstein said there was insufficient evidence to establish that Trump obstructed justice. Rosenstein left the Justice Department in May 2019 and joined King & Spalding law firm’s special government investigations team the following January.
President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, declined to promise during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would protect Durham’s investigation or make his eventual report public. However, Garland said he did not have any reason to think it wasn’t the right move to keep Durham from continuing his work.
Much to the chagrin of Trump and many of his allies, Durham has so far secured only one guilty plea. FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who has since left the bureau, admitted to Durham in the summer that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, editing a CIA email in 2017 to state that Page was “not a source.” Page denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime. Clinesmith was sentenced to one year of probation and no prison time.
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With Durham’s inquiry surpassing Mueller’s work in terms of duration, Trump issued a statement this month seeking an update. “Where’s John Durham? Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?” he asked.
The Justice Department offered a glimpse of life from Durham’s inquiry, redacting certain information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request due to ongoing matters.
