House speaker race heats up
House Speaker Ryan opposes conservative threat to impeach the Justice Dept. official.
Conservative Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio announces his bid to replace retiring Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), whose preferred successor is Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday he did not support a push by some of his conservative colleagues to impeach Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
“No, I do not,” Ryan (R-Wis.) said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus introduced a measure on Wednesday that would remove Rosenstein from his post, blaming him for withholding documents subpoenaed by Republican-led oversight committees.
“I don’t think we should be cavalier with this process or this term,” Ryan told reporters. “I don’t think this rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
He said he also feared the process would tie up the Senate, delaying GOP priorities such as the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions also defended Rosenstein on Thursday and urged Congress to work on other priorities, such as immigration.
“My deputy, Rod Rosenstein, is highly capable. I have the highest confidence in him,” Sessions said at an event in Boston.
Although House conservatives have made a major issue of threatening to remove Rosenstein, it’s unclear how much support they have in the chamber, where the move would require a majority vote. As for the Senate, where actually removing Rosenstein would require a two-thirds vote, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed the idea last week as “pretty far-fetched.”
Rep. Mark Meadows (RN.C.), who sponsored the impeachment proposal, did not introduce it as a privileged measure, which would have allowed him to force a vote on the House floor. Because the House is breaking for recess this week, a vote isn’t possible until members return in September.
After Ryan’s news conference, Meadows told reporters the Justice Department would have “one last chance to comply.”
“Hopefully what we can do is avoid impeachment, and hopefully avoid contempt, and get the documents,” he said. “But certainly both of those things ... remain on the table.”
Meadows and other conservatives have locked horns with the Justice Department for months, demanding sensitive records on the investigations into Russian election interference and former Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Justice Department officials say they’ve been deluged with the requests, which started with demands from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) for records on secret surveillance of Carter Page, a Trump campaign advisor.
A recent subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee asked for, among other items, all documents provided to the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General for its examination of the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.
That request led the Justice Department to appoint John Lausch, U.S. attorney in Chicago, to oversee the process of sorting through about 880,000 records. Officials said they had to create a new computer program to search through classified documents, and congressional staff have been continuously visiting the department to view the files.
Meadows previously said he hoped the process would help exonerate Trump.
“When we get these documents, we believe that it will do away with this whole fiasco of what they call the Russian-Trump collusion, because there wasn’t any,” he said last month.
Rosenstein, a Republican appointed by Trump to the second-highest position in the Justice Department, has been a frequent target of the president’s allies.
“Why are you keeping information from Congress?” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked at a hearing last month. Jordan announced Thursday that he would make a bid to become House speaker.
“I am not keeping any information from Congress,” Rosenstein responded.
The only subordinate executive branch official to have faced impeachment was Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876. He was accused of “criminal disregard for his office” and making appointments in return for payments, according to the House historian’s office. Belknap was acquitted in the Senate.