Rod Rosenstein takes one for the team
Earlier today, Donald Trump finally decided to go for broke by publicly ordering an investigation into how the DOJ and FBI were investigating his crimes during the election. Trump even went so far as to spell out that he’s targeting members of the Obama administration as part of his – dare we say it? – witch hunt. In response, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has announced that he’s going along with it. Some observers are surprised. I’m not, because Rosenstein is smart.
After Trump’s tweet, Rod Rosenstein released this statement to the media: “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.” Take a moment to parse that. He begins with the word “if” – which tells you all you need to know. He’s humoring Trump by agreeing to poke around into the phony notion that the FBI was somehow doing something inappropriate by doing its job.
Rosenstein’s faux-investigation will spend a long time going nowhere, but Trump won’t figure that out until it’s too late. Eventually, after Trump has already been ousted and sent on his way, Rosenstein will quietly announce on a Friday afternoon that he investigated the matter, and that the Feds did nothing inappropriate. So why is Rosenstein going along with this at all?
In short, Rod Rosenstein has to keep his job at nearly all costs. If Donald Trump finds an excuse to fire him, then Trump might have an easier time of trying to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which would hinder the investigation into Trump’s crimes. So Rosenstein is taking one for the team by pretending to agree to do Trump’s dirty work. This ensures that Rosenstein and Mueller remain on the job, and that Trump is ultimately taken down.
