Ryan rejects GOP bloc’s push to oust Rosenstein
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that he does not support a push by some of his conservative colleagues to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“No, I do not,” Ryan, R-Wis., said during a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus introduced a measure 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 other GOP priorities such as the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions also defended Rosenstein on Thursday and urged Congress to spend time on other priorities, such as immigration.
“My deputy, Rod Rosenstein, is highly capable. I have the highest confidence in him,” he said during 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 farfetched.”
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, it could not receive a vote until members return in September.
After Ryan’s news conference, Meadows told reporters the Justice Department will 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 are on the table and remain on the table.”
Meadows and other conservative Republicans have locked horns with the Justice Department for months, demanding sensitive records involving the investigations into Russian election interference and Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Justice Department officials said they’ve been deluged with the requests, which started with demands from Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., for records on secret surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.
A recent subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee asked for, among other items, all documents provided to the Justice Department Inspector General for its examination of the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.
That request led the Justice Department to appoint John Lausch, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, to oversee the process of sorting through roughly 880,000 records. Officials said they had to build 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 hopes the process will help exonerate Trump.
Rosenstein, a registered Republican appointed by Trump to the second-highest position in the Justice Department, has been a frequent target of the president’s allies.