Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein dismissed reports that House Republicans are mulling articles of impeachment against him, noting that they were leaked anonymously to various news sites.
“They can’t even resist leaking their own drafts,” the Justice Department’s No. 2 said at an event in Washington Tuesday afternoon, adding, “I just don’t have anything to say about documents like that, that nobody has the courage to put their name on and that they leak in that way.”
[Related: Key Republicans warn Christopher Wray, Rod Rosenstein in danger of contempt of Congress, impeachment]
The Washington Post and The Hill reported late Monday night that a group of GOP lawmakers — led by Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus — have drafted eight articles of impeachment against Rosenstein.
The draft escalates tensions between Trump-aligned lawmakers and the Justice Department. Conservative lawmakers have said Rosenstein is stonewalling their efforts to obtain documents about FBI surveillance of Trump campaign members during the 2016 presidential election, as well as documents that could show bias atop the department.
Rosenstein also oversees special counsel Robert Mueller and his ongoing and wide-ranging probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“But I can tell you, that there have been people that have been making threats against me privately and publicly for some time, and I think they should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein continued on Tuesday.
He added: “We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law, and any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job.”
Meadows sent a pointed retort at Rosenstein later in the day Tuesday. “If he believes being asked to do his job is ‘extortion,’ then Rod Rosenstein should step aside and allow us to find a new Deputy Attorney General —preferably one who is interested in transparency,” Meadows wrote on Twitter.
Last week, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said they had reached an agreement with Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd and U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who was appointed in April to oversee Congress’s documents requests.
“The Committees have reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to access the documents we have been requesting for months,” the two lawmakers said in a joint statement last Monday. “We look forward to reviewing the information to better understand the decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 and 2017.”
The two committees are investigating bias at the Justice Department and FBI, as well as how the latter handled its probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Rosenstein defended how the Justice Department hands over those documents to Congress.
“We have a responsibility to work with the Congress, and they have a responsibility to understand their duty is not to interfere … as long as everyone understands that were able to work these things out,” he said.
He added: “I have a responsibility as deputy attorney general, as does the attorney general to defend the independence and integrity of Department of Justice. Were we to just open our doors to allow Congress to come and rummage thorough the files, that would be a serous infringement on the separation of powers.”
A Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said that any effort to impeach Rosenstein would send a “terrible message.”
“The President’s obviously growing more and more concerned about what ultimately will be his fate,” Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., told CNN’s John Berman earlier Tuesday. “We should protect our democracy, protect this process, protect the rule of law. I’m very disappointed that they would even suggest that they were seriously considering removing Rod Rosenstein.”
