Conservative Lawmakers Deliver Panic-Inducing News to Rosenstein
The Freedom Caucus is fighting back.
Almost a year into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of “Russian collusion” with the Donald Trump presidential campaign, no evidence has yet publicly emerged for a storyline that has had Democrats slavering for the impeachment of the president.
But the man who’s formally in charge of that investigation might be facing impeachment of his own.
House Republicans in the Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of lawmakers that’s gotten increasingly agitated with the partisan nature of Mueller’s probe, have drafted articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, The Washington Post reported.
According to The Post, the one-page document outlining the reason to remove the Justice Department’s second in command “came after weeks of disputes with Rosenstein over the Justice Department’s response to congressional requests for documents about the decisions and behavior of federal law enforcement officials working on the Russia investigation and other federal probes, including the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the Freedom Caucus, told the Post the caucus could push the impeachment idea if Rosenstein and the Justice Department don’t stop stonewalling congressional requests for information about the origins of the “Russia collusion” probe.
“My frustrations about their inability to respond to simple requests could warrant further action,” he told the newspaper.
Impeachment of a federal official is not an overnight matter, as the Post reported. Articles of impeachment generally go through the House Judiciary Committee and are then reported to the House floor, where they can pass with a simple majority. They then go to the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is necessary for a conviction.
Given the blind partisanship of Senate Democrats, an impeachment effort against Rosenstein wouldn’t stand a chance, but even talk of it is sending a message to the Justice Department that Republicans are running out of patience.
The articles of impeachment are just the latest twist in the long-running saga of the special counsel’s investigation, which started when Rosenstein appointed Mueller on May 17, 2017.
Rosenstein had the power to appoint Mueller because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Justice Department’s handling of the case because of his own contact with the Russian ambassador to the United States while he was a senator playing a major role in the Trump campaign.
“My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted,” Rosenstein said at the time, according to The New York Times. “I have made no such determination.”
For the Democrat Party and their allies in the liberal media, of course, that sentence might as well have not been said.
From the beginning, the Mueller investigation itself has been considered prima facie proof that there is something to the “Russia collusion” story — and if Mueller hasn’t been able to prove it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
But for Trump supporters and the Freedom Caucus, the special counsel’s investigation, and the unwillingness by the Justice Department and the FBI to produce information about the clearly tainted aspects of the investigation (like adulterous FBI agent Peter Strzok conspiring against Trump with his bureau lawyer-lover Lisa Page), have been proof that Trump’s opponents are using the federal government itself as a weapon against a president they both hate and fear.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, Trump himself indicated he was losing patience with the Justice Department’s handling of the Mueller probe.
“They have a witch hunt against the president of the United States going on, I’ve taken the position — and I don’t have to take this position, maybe I’ll change — that I will not be involved with the Justice Department,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner. “I will wait till this is over.”
Well, the Freedom Caucus is clearly getting frustrated with waiting, and panic might be starting to set in for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Because the Freedom Caucus is fighting back.
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