Rachel Lee Brand (born May 1, 1973) is an American lawyer, academic, and former government official. She served as the United States Associate Attorney General from May 22, 2017, until February 20, 2018, when she resigned to take a job as head of global corporate governance at Walmart.[1] Brand was the first woman to serve as Associate Attorney General.[2] She also served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Prior to becoming Associate Attorney General, Brand was an associate professor at Antonin Scalia Law School.[3][4]
Report: Rachel Brand quit the DOJ partly for fear that she’d be put in charge of Russiagate
So she’s bailing out.
As far back as last fall, Brand had expressed to friends that she felt overwhelmed and unsupported in her job, especially as many key positions under her jurisdiction had still not been filled with permanent, Senate-confirmed officials.
Four of the 13 divisions overseen by the associate attorney general remain unfilled, including the civil rights division and the civil division, over one year into the Trump administration…
Should Rosenstein be fired, Brand would be next in line to oversee Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, thrusting her into a political spotlight that Brand told friends she did not want to enter.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/02/12/report-rachel-brand-quit-doj-partly-fear-shed-put-charge-russiagate/
>Should Rosenstein be fired, Brand would be next in line to oversee Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, thrusting her into a political spotlight that Brand told friends she did not want to enter.
Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, who will depart from the number three spot at the Department of Justice, countered rumors during an exclusive interview with Fox News that her decision to resign was in any way connected with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Brand gave no specific reason for her resignation when she announced it this month, leading to speculation the move was related to the Mueller Russia investigation, over which she would have assumed authority if Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were to step down.
“Anyone who actually knows me knows that had nothing to do with my departure,” Brand told Fox News, hitting back at the rumors and insisting her departure was primarily due to the offer of a lucrative top legal position at Walmart.
She called that position, Walmart’s “global governance director,” a job “most lawyers would dream their whole career about taking.”
“I never had any reason to think that the Mueller probe would come to me, and even if it had, it has nothing to do with why I left the department,” Brand told Fox. “This was about seizing an opportunity, not about leaving DOJ.”
Brand also refused to point to conflict with the Trump White House as the motivation for her leaving after nine months. “I think that the overwhelming majority of the DOJ workforce does a pretty good job of tuning that out,” she said.
Fox also quoted a source close to Brand who downplayed the idea that she was “overwhelmed” at DOJ. “If she really wanted to leave DOJ, she wouldn’t uproot her whole family to Arkansas, she could have easily found something closer to home,” the source said.
Brand has spent her final days in government on something of a victory lap, having secured passage of the Section 702 wiretap re-authorization, a project she largely oversaw and told Fox News “was a huge win for the intelligence community and for all Americans.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/02/22/rachel-brand-denies-mueller-investigation-anything-do-departure-doj/
https://lawandcrime.com/uncategorized/rachel-brand-just-outmaneuvered-president-trump/
Rachel Brand just outmaneuvered President Trump, and it’s pretty fantastic. Brand, the #3 at the DOJ (under Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein) ended her long career as a government lawyer Friday, and left the DOJ for greener and less precarious pastures. In doing so, Brand made a statement many of us can get behind—that she’d rather work at Walmart than risk being part of the Trump administration for one more day.
As Trump’s ever-intensifying obsession with Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation continues, Brand knows what we all know – that it’s only a matter of time. Trump will clearly try and oust Mueller in some way. Although the president himself lacks the legal ability to fire Mueller, his best option would be to pull a Nixon and order his AG to do so. Sessions is recused, so for all things Russia, Rod Rosenstein is on deck. If Rosenstein refused (as did Nixon’s Deputy Attorney General), the next in line would be Rachel Brand; rather than risk becoming the next Robert Bork (the man who carried out Nixon’s bidding, later to find himself a failed Supreme Court nominee), Brand made a quick exit and took a sweet private sector job as Walmart’s top lawyer. If Brand stayed, she would likely have found herself in the untenable position of absorbing the president’s order to fire Mueller; rather than refuse and be fired, or comply and become complicit, Brand took the smart money and excised herself entirely.
Brand’s strategic exit may have also been influenced by peaking FISA drama. Last week, the battle of dueling memos centered around a 2016 FISA warrant executed against then-Trump adviser Carter Page, the White House taking the position that the FBI went too far with too little. Rachel Brand has, in the past, advocated for extension of FISA law, saying that FISA “has been valuable and effective in protecting the nation’s security.” Last year, in a Washington Post op-ed, Brand passionately argued for the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”):
While Brand’s position had nothing to do with Trump, Russia, elections, or collusions, her pro-FISA stance can’t be making the Administration too comfy right now.
I’d like to think that Brand’s move was motivated as much by integrity as it was by self-preservation. Her departure – just nine months into a prestigious position, and before she became subject to major media scrutiny — rings with the kind of principle-over-politics attitude that has become far too rare in post-Trump America. Brand is 44 years-old, a gifted lawyer, and a mother of two.
Rachel Brand was forced to quit to pave the way for Trump to appointment a replacement for RR when he resigns. She would have been his replacement automatically, but now she is gone.
Trump can appointment someone temporarily. . . someone who has already been approved by congress and serves in another cabinet position.