Ex-deputy AG defends Mueller appointment

Filing errors unknown at time, he says

In testimony Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the Russia investigation but said he understood President Donald Trump’s frustration, “given the outcome.” More photos at arkansasonline.com/64hearing/.
(AP/Greg Nash)
In testimony Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the Russia investigation but said he understood President Donald Trump’s frustration, “given the outcome.” More photos at arkansasonline.com/64hearing/. (AP/Greg Nash)

WASHINGTON -- Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended during congressional testimony on Wednesday his decision to appoint a special counsel for the Trump-Russia investigation.

"I still believe it was the right decision under the circumstances," Rosenstein said to the Senate Judiciary Committee about appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel. "I recognize that people can criticize me for them. That's the consequence of being in these jobs -- you make decisions and people criticize you for them -- but I believed it was the right decision at the time."

But Rosenstein also said he would not have signed an application in June 2017 to renew a court wiretap order targeting Carter Page, a former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump, if he had known at the time that it contained factual errors and omissions, as an inspector general found.

"I do not believe the investigation was a hoax," Rosenstein said of the Russia inquiry. But soon after said he could not "vouch for the allegations."

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"As we now know, the eventual conclusions were that Russians committed crimes seeking to influence the election and Americans did not conspire with them," he said.

The Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has made clear that he intends to keep a focus in the coming months on the investigators who sought to understand the scope of Russia's election interference and ties to Trump campaign associates.

"We're going to look backward so we can move forward," Graham said in explaining the purpose for the hearings. "If you don't like Trump, fine, but this is not about liking Trump or not liking Trump. This is about us as a nation."

Graham and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, plan to ask their panels today to empower them to issue subpoenas related to the Russia investigation. Those would seek reams of records and testimony from dozens of current and former law enforcement and national-security officials, including prominent members ofPresident Barack Obama's administration.

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The session was the first major investigative hearing the Senate has had in months.

"I just do not understand why we as a committee are focusing on things that further deepen the discords of partisan posturing in America," said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. "I might be missing something, but to me we are in a pandemic like we have not seen since 1918, an economic crisis like we have not seen since the Depression and uprisings across America like we have not seen since 1968."

MUELLER FINDINGS

Rosenstein was sworn in to the No. 2 post at the Justice Department just weeks before the president fired James Comey as the FBI director, and within days Trump publicly and privately linked the dismissal to the Russia investigation. Rosenstein then called Mueller, a former FBI director and prosecutor, out of retirement to lead the inquiry.

Mueller's investigators found that while the Russian government covertly intervened in the 2016 election with a goal of helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, the evidence was insufficient to prove any criminal conspiracy.

Republican and Democratic senators used the questioning of Rosenstein as a proxy to argue about whether the investigation was justified, given Mueller's findings. Rosenstein defended the investigation while casting Trump's long-standing attacks as understandable grievances.

"I do not consider the investigation to be corrupt, senator, but I certainly understand the president's frustration given the outcome, which was in fact that there was no evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign advisers and Russians," Rosenstein said to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

But when Graham asked if he would agree with the general statement that by August 2017, there was "no there there" when it came to a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump, Rosenstein said yes.

Lawmakers also jostled over the findings in December by the Justice Department's independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz. He concluded that the Russia investigation had a lawful basis and found no evidence of political bias in its opening, but uncovered serious errors and omissions by the FBI in applications to obtain a wiretap order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting Page in October 2016, as well as three renewal orders in 2017.

The Justice Department has since told a court that it did not think the available evidence met the legal standard to keep invading Page's privacy for the last two renewals. While Rosenstein was not involved in the early iterations of monitoring Page, he signed off on the third and final renewal application for surveillance.

Rosenstein blamed the FBI for the problems, citing the inspector general's findings that the bureau failed to follow its procedures and that blamed management breakdowns.

PARTISAN DIVIDE

But Republicans found Rosenstein's explanations unpersuasive and, as the hearing went on, began to criticize him for obfuscating and failing to correct what they argued were blatant abuses of the system he oversaw.

"You came into a profoundly politicized world, yet all of this was allowed to go forward under your leadership," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. "That unfortunately leads to only two possible conclusions: either that you were complicit in the wrongdoing, which I don't believe was the case, or that your performance of your duties was grossly negligent."

But Democrats accused Republicans of misrepresenting the investigation for political gain. The hearing in particular highlighted a partisan split over the significance of the flaws in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent whose research was funded by Democrats, that included allegations about Page.

Republicans repeatedly sought to keep the focus on the dossier.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., accused Democrats on the committee of contending that the Mueller report was of "no consequence" and then pivoted to the use of the dossier in the wiretap applications as if they and the report were the same thing.

"Now we hear from person after person on that side of the dais that the Mueller report is of no consequence. No consequence?" he asked.

The Democrat senators sought to distinguish the larger Russia investigation and the eventual Mueller report from the use of Steele dossier information in the wiretap applications.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., noted that the FBI officials who opened the inquiry "had not even seen the Steele dossier, but because the Steele dossier was cited in the Carter Page [surveillance] applications, the president and his allies falsely claim that the entire Russia investigation" would never have happened but for the document.

Rosenstein also denied making provocative suggestions in the chaotic days after Comey's firing to both secretly record his conversations with the president as part of any investigation into whether the dismissal constituted obstruction of justice and to recruit Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump.

"I did not suggest or hint at secretly recording President Trump," Rosenstein said in response to questions from Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. "I have never in any way suggested that the president be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. I can give you a more detailed explanation if you have time."

FLYNN CASE

Rosenstein addressed another controversy that he was questioned about: the Justice Department's recent move to try to drop the criminal case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with a Russian diplomat, but later changed defense teams and sought to undo the case. Attorney General William Barr tapped U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen in St. Louis to look into the matter, and Jensen ultimately uncovered FBI notes, which Flynn's defense team has alleged show Flynn was entrapped.

At Jensen's recommendation, Barr decided that FBI agents did not have a good reason to interview Flynn in the first place, and thus his lies were not "material" to any case -- a requirement to substantiate the charge to which he admitted.

Rosenstein was not leading the investigation when the FBI spoke to Flynn. But he was supervising the matter when Flynn later pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, confronted Rosenstein about the matter, saying that at a June 2018 meeting the two had, Rosenstein refused to turn over case-related documents.

"It's clear you were misleading me, Congress, and the American people when you suggested we should be satisfied with Flynn's plea agreement," Grassley said.

Rosenstein responded that he was reluctant to turn over materials only because of the Justice Department's long-standing policy of not giving lawmakers access to such documents in a case that is pending in court.

Rosenstein said he approved the case against Flynn because "the evidence demonstrated his guilt, and he and his attorneys admitted his guilt." He said much of what has been revealed recently was "news to me."

"I obviously didn't know there was exculpatory evidence," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Charlie Savage, Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; by Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; and by Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post.

photo

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., questions former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein during Wednesday’s hearing. Hawley accused Democrats on the committee of contending that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was of “no consequence” and then turning to the dossier in the wiretap applications as if they and the report were the same thing. (The New York Times/Jim Lo Scalzo)

A Section on 06/04/2020

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