House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said Monday evening he and a “number” of colleagues are prepared to make a move toward impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if he doesn’t submit to testimony under oath to explain reports that he spoke about undermining President Trump.
“We are pushing very hard to make sure that he comes in under oath to Congress and let the American people judge for themselves,” Meadows said on Fox News. “I can’t tell you that if he does not, there are a number of us that are standing by really with impeachment documents. That said, we cannot have this kind of activity continue at DOJ.”
A report from the New York Times on Friday rattled Washington, detailing how Rosenstein talked about secretly recording Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to oust the president after Comey was fired in May 2017. Rosenstein has denied considering such actions, and follow-up reports said he was being sarcastic or joking about the wire.
“We continue to have different narratives come out of the DOJ. If indeed Rod Rosenstein said these things, which many believe that he did, many believe that he said it in a non-joking manner, then he needs to explain that, not only to the president of the United States, but the American people,” Meadows said.
Meadows is the highest-profile lawmaker yet to float a renewed impeachment effort against the No. 2 official at the Justice Department. Hours earlier, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said he and Meadows were poised to take action.
“Any member of Congress can call up Rosenstein’s impeachment and it must be voted on in two days,” Gaetz said Monday evening on Fox News. “If we don’t have Rosenstein in the witness chair, [Rep.] Mark Meadows and I are prepared to do just that and keep Congress in town to do the oversight work.” He referred to the use of a privileged motion, which under House rules would require a vote two days after it being filed.
A similar effort was mounted last year by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, against Trump, but after Green called it up, Republicans made a motion to set it aside, and that GOP motion won easily, as a majority of Democrats supported them. The House agreed to table the resolution in a 364-58 vote.
So far the push to get Rosenstein to testify appears to be only talk. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a key ally of President Trump, tweeted earlier in the day that Rosenstein needs to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about reports that emerged last week.
A spokesperson for the committee did not immediately return a request for comment.
Monday was another wild news day for Rosenstein, starting when initial reports indicated that he had verbally offered his resignation as he expected to be fired. But after visiting the White House, Rosenstein returned to the Justice Department in the early afternoon, still with his job, and a statement from the White House saying he and Trump will meet Thursday.
According to a New York Times report, Rosenstein made up his mind to resign Friday evening, after the reporting emerged on discussions of undermining Trump, due to his concern that he would have to testify about it before Congress.
Rosenstein, who is overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, has felt the heat from the GOP lawmakers before. In July, Jordan and a handful of other GOP lawmakers filed articles of impeachment against Rosenstein for what they said was his defiance of congressional subpoenas and his move to withhold documents. However, the impeachment efforts never came to fruition and never were voted on by the House.
Meadows said the confusion Monday surrounding Rosenstein’s fate at the DOJ proves there is a need to declassify “everything,” a reference to documents that he and GOP allies have long sought.
“The latest reports on Rod Rosenstein underscore the desperate need for transparency at the DOJ. Release the documents. Declassify everything. Stop the games and show Americans the truth about this Russia investigation,” Meadows said in a tweet in the afternoon. “If they have nothing to hide, they should act like it.”
Meadows has been at the forefront of conservative lawmakers pushing Trump to declassify documents pertaining to the Russia investigation, convinced they will expose bias against the president at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI. One week ago Trump made the order for such documents to be declassified, but later backed off after meeting with DOJ officials warning that the move could be perceived as tampering with the Russia probe and hearing concerns from “key allies,” Instead, he said he would leave it to the DOJ inspector general to review the documents.
But calls from Trump allies to recommit to declassification in the name of transparency have persisted, boosted by reporting Friday that said Rosenstein talked about secretly recording Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to oust the president after Comey was fired in May 2017.
“Rod Rosenstein allegedly talks about ‘secret tapings’ in a DOJ meeting but denies actually doing it,” Meadows said in a follow-up tweet later in the afternoon. “I’m much more concerned about potential secret tapings that officials authorized and now won’t talk about it.”
Democrats have said the push to declassify the documents would endanger national security by revealing sources and methods the intelligence community uses to attain information and accused Republicans of trying to taint the Mueller investigation.
Meadows also complained that the Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rosenstein is just as bad as it was under the Obama administration when it comes to transparency.
“Under Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice has had just as much of a transparency problem as it did even under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch — the bar for which is extremely low. This is disastrous, and it needs to end now,” he said, adding, “If they have nothing to hide, it is time for them to act like it.”
