Republican lawmakers laid the groundwork for the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Wednesday, accusing the second ranking Justice Department official who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller of obstruction by defying congressional subpoenas.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., announced Wednesday night that he had filed a resolution alongside Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, — the two are the chairmen of the House Freedom Caucus — and nine other colleagues to impeach Rosenstein.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment to the Washington Examiner on the situation.
In a press release, Meadows and Jordan accused the Justice Department of withholding “embarrassing documents and information.”
“The stonewalling over this last year has been just as bad or worse than under the Obama administration. Multiple times we’ve caught DOJ officials hiding information from Congress, withholding relevant documents, or even outright ignoring Congressional subpoenas,” Meadows wrote.
Jordan added: “The DOJ is keeping information from Congress. Enough is enough. It’s time to hold Mr. Rosenstein accountable for blocking Congress’s constitutional oversight role.”
The resolution comes hours after Justice Department told Meadows and other GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that it had nearly complied with what an official characterized as a historically large demand for documents.
In May when impeachment rumors first began to make headlines, Rosenstein said it would not “affect the way we do our job.”
“I can tell you that there are people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time, and I think they should understand by now, the Department of Justice is not gonna be extorted. We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law,” Rosenstein said at the time at an event in Washington.
House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee leaders were also already told earlier this month by a top official that the Justice Department had “substantially complied with” sizable documents requests from the two panels.
Ahead of the Wednesday afternoon meeting, Justice Department officials told reporters that two subpoenas from the House Intelligence Committee have been fully complied with. The first subpoena came in eight parts, and pertained to warrant applications and court documents related to the surveillance of Carter Page, in addition to the FBI’s relationship with Christopher Steele, the author of the Trump dossier.
The second House Intelligence subpoena was about a specific individual, which was later dubbed “spy-gate” by the president. That request was fulfilled through multiple briefings, the officials explained.
Almost all demands from a House Judiciary Committee subpoena have been fulfilled with oversight from U.S. Attorney John Lausch of Illinois, the officials said.
The document demands include the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible links to the Trump campaign, in addition to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
More than 880,000 pages of documents have been made available to the House Judiciary Committee through that subpoena, the Justice Department said.
The impeachment resolution has five articles, and covers everything from Rosenstein approving the continuance of a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide, and Rosenstein’s decision to redact the price of a $70,000 conference table bought by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Rosenstein signed off on one of four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Page, which was revealed when the Justice Department released heavily redacted copies of the applications.
The first FISA court application before Rosenstein assumed his position in April 2017, but Republicans have consistently questioned if the warrant was sparked in part because the Steele dossier.
However, the FISC applications show that FBI investigators had other reasons to suspect Page had ties to Russia.
The impeachment resolution accuses the decision to sign off on the warrant applications as “potentially improper,” and accuses Rosenstein of not properly vetting the Steele dossier before it was first used by the FBI in October 2017 — months before the deputy attorney general assumed his position.
“Mr. Rosenstein has failed in his responsibility for the proper authorization of searches under FISA, and his conduct related to the surveillance of American citizens working on the Trump campaign has permanently undermined both public and congressional confidence in significant counterintelligence program processes,” the impeachment articles charge.
It is unclear what teeth the resolution has — the House goes on a five-week recess Thursday, and is in session for less than three weeks total leading up to Election Day 2018. And it can’t come to the floor for an immediate vote unless handled under rules governing privileged resolutions.
“The way it’s being handled at this point is not privileged,” a top GOP aide told the Washington Examiner. “That could change.”
Addtionally, a majority of Meadows and Jordan’s House colleagues would also have to support the resolution, where it would then have to win by a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
But the efforts certainly have the backing of the White House.
At a press briefing earlier this month, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about impeaching Rosenstein, to which she replied: “The President has made clear he’d like all documents to be turned over, but we’re continuing to work with our Department of Justice.”
“The president would like to see the documents turned over,” Sanders added. “When the President no longer has confidence in someone, his administration will let you know.” Democrats have accused Republicans of going at Rosenstein to chip away at Mueller’s investigation, which he took over in May 2017. Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
House Reps. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the move a “a panicked and dangerous attempt to undermine an ongoing criminal investigation,” and not a principled attempt to conduct oversight, in a joint statement Wednesday night.
“The president should not mistake this move by his congressional enablers as a pretext to take any action against Mr. Rosenstein or Mr. Mueller and his investigation,” they said. “Any attempt to do so will be viewed by Congress and the American people as further proof of an effort to obstruct justice with severe consequences for Trump and his presidency.”
In the articles of impeachment, the Republicans specifically cite the so-called “scope memo,” which outlines Mueller’s investigation.
The Aug. 2, 2017, memo, released in a court filing in the special counsel’s case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Washington, is a classified and heavily-redacted document — and is the one and only document the Justice Department has said it will not turn over to Republican lawmakers.
Turning over the unredacted memo would “threaten the integrity” of Mueller’s investigation, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told Meadows and Jordan in a May letter.
The impeachment resolution again criticizes Rosenstein for withholding the memo from Congress, and say it raises “fundamental concerns” about the Justice Department’s basis for “alleging” collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign — something the Justice Department has not done.
No executive branch official has ever been successfully removed from his or her position through impeachment.
