Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Sunday that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of a special counsel to handle Trump investigations suggests the Justice Department believes it has a “viable potential case” against former President Donald Trump.
Rosenstein, a Trump appointee who selected former special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate ties between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2017, made the comments while appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation. The former DOJ official said that while he “probably” wouldn’t have appointed a special counsel in this circumstance, as Garland did last week, the move indicates that the department still thinks it could go forward with prosecuting Trump.
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“It’s easy to second guess from outside,” Rosenstein told host Margaret Brennan. “I think, you know, my inclination, given that the investigation had been going on for some time and given the stage which they’ve reached, is that I probably would not have, but I just can’t tell from the outside.”
“I think what it indicates is that, you know, despite the fact the department has been at this for some time, almost two years on the Jan. 6 investigation, close to a year, the Mar a Lago investigation, that they still believe that they have a viable potential case,” he continued after being asked if he thought the special counsel appointment indicated a willingness by Garland to prosecute the former president. “It doesn’t mean they made a decision to go forward. But it certainly is an indication they believe it’s a possibility.”
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Garland announced his selection of Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, as special counsel on Trump-related matters on Friday. The specter of criminal charges against Trump reemerged after Trump declared a 2024 presidential bid on Tuesday night, as the DOJ is investigating Trump related to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, and separately conducted an unprecedented FBI raid of Trump’s Florida resort home of Mar-a-Lago in August.
For his part, Trump has condemned Smith’s appointment, calling it “unfair to the country” and vowing to fight the continued investigations he faces.
