Rod Rosenstein says DOJ inspector general '100% vindicated' memo used to fire James Comey

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he has no regrets for writing the memo used by President Trump to justify the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Rosenstein, who is joining the King & Spalding law firm’s special government investigations team, told the Washington Post his decision was backed up by a Justice Department inspector general report that was highly critical of Comey. “I would have written that memo if any president asked me about my opinion about Jim Comey, and as you know, my view was 100% vindicated by the lengthy and detailed inspector general investigation," Rosenstein said.

Michael Horowitz, the DOJ's watchdog, released a report in July 2018 that called Comey “insubordinate” and found he “affirmatively concealed” his intentions from Justice Department leadership during the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server. Other inspector general reports have faulted Comey for his notes memorializing his conversations with Trump and the FBI's "entire chain of command" in seeking Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to wiretap Carter Page, an American foreign policy adviser who helped Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017, citing the memo Rosenstein wrote at his request, which focused on the "mistakes" Comey made in handling the investigation into Clinton's unauthorized email server, and an accompanying letter from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Rosenstein, who called Comey a "partisan pundit" earlier this year, claimed his dispute with the FBI leader was "not personal." Rosenstein said Comey "violated some very important principles, and that’s consistent with what the inspector general found." In the days that followed Comey's firing, Rosenstein supposedly spiraled into rage and paranoia as he felt like he was being used by the White House, as Trump himself acknowledged publicly that the "Russia thing" played into his decision, referring to the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. Trump also reportedly made clear he wanted to fire Comey because of his frustration with the director refusing to say publicly that Trump was not personally under investigation.

It was during this period that Rosenstein was said to have discussed wearing a “wire” to record conversations with Trump and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. Rosenstein and his staff brushed off these reports of his comments as either untrue or that what he said was meant as a joke. On May 17, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to take over the Russia investigation. The move enraged Trump, who purportedly entertained the possibility of firing Rosenstein and Sessions, who had recused himself from the case.

Rosenstein insisted he left the Justice Department in May on "relatively good terms" while acknowledging he had some "ups and downs" in his relationship with the president. Looking back at his overall tenure as deputy attorney general, which lasted two years, Rosenstein said, "Certainly in retrospect there are things that I might do differently," but he also said, "I think we got all the big issues right."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/rod-rosenstein-says-doj-inspector-general-100-vindicated-memo-used-to-fire-james-comey