Trump assails Justice Dept.
President sides with House GOP as they press for access to reports
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plunged into an angry dispute Wednesday between conservative House Republicans and the deputy attorney general, siding with hard-line lawmakers over his own Justice Department as they pressed for access to sensitive documents related to the special counsel’s investigation and other politically charged cases.
In a Twitter post, Trump called the legal system “rigged” and amplified the lawmakers’ complaints that the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, was not moving fast enough to turn over the documents they wanted. The president stepped in just as Rosenstein appeared to mollify three key committee chairmen who were also
demanding internal documents.
“They don’t want to turn over Documents to Congress. What are they afraid of ? Why so much redacting? Why such unequal ‘justice?’ Trump wrote. “At some point I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!” Which presidential powers Trump was referring to was not immediately clear.
Distrust between Rosenstein and Congress has been building over months. In recent weeks, he has made significant gestures to release documents demanded by prominent congressmen, only to be threatened with impeachment by lawmakers from the far-right.
Tipping off White House?
Rosenstein on Tuesday responded to that threat by declaring that the Justice Department would not be “extorted.”
Officials at the department believe that the conservatives have now gone too far with document requests related to continuing investigations that the lawmakers clearly do not support, including the inquiry led by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into Russia’s election interference. A former federal law enforcement official familiar with the department’s views said that Rosenstein and top FBI officials have come to suspect that some lawmakers were using their oversight authority to gain intelligence about that investigation so that it could be shared with the White House.
Trump’s threat on Wednesday to intervene bolstered those voices and could undermine the Justice Department’s ability to protect some of its most closely held secrets. Lawmakers conducting oversight are usually given summaries of the information but not the intelligence collected directly from wiretaps and sensitive sources.
Similar standoffs between law enforcement officials and Congress have resulted in compromise dating back decades, but in those cases, the Justice Department had the support of the president. Without Trump’s support, Congress is gaining the advantage.
Republican lawmakers, for their part, argue that Rosenstein’s department has stalled important requests and withheld crucial details from documents it does turn over — material they say is necessary to doing their jobs. And their threats are hardly veiled.
“Despite his repeated promises to cooperate, Mr. Rosenstein’s supervision of the Department of Justice has been sorely inadequate,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., one of Rosenstein’s most outspoken antagonists. “Valid investigative requests from Congress have been slowwalked, stonewalled and impeded at each step of the way under his watch.”
He added, “If Mr. Rosenstein’s hesitance to produce documents and information to Congress represented an effort to save the Department of Justice from embarrassment, it is too late.”
Rosenstein, aware of the threats against him, has taken unusual steps to try to meet the demands, adding employees to review the requested files and sharing unredacted documents normally off limits to Congress — including memos drafted by former FBI Director James Comey about his interactions with Trump. The department has even set up office space at its headquarters for congressional staff members and lawmakers to review hundreds of thousands of documents already studied by the department’s inspector general, according to a department official.
Cooperation with Nunes
Those efforts have placated powerful Republican committee chairmen.
After Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, threatened last month to hold Rosenstein in contempt of Congress or proceed with impeachment, Rosenstein gave him access to an almost completely unredacted FBI memo on the opening of the Russia investigation and won his thanks.
He reached an agreement last week with the two Republicans who run the committees that conduct oversight of the Justice Department, Reps. Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, to satisfy the last of their demands for documents related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and other decisions related to the Russia case.
But those compromises may have only emboldened Trump’s fiercest allies, including Meadows, the chairman of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a former chairman of the caucus. In an unusual show of defiance, both men have insisted that the agreement with the chairmen of the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees is not good enough and that they need access to an unredacted version of an August 2017 memo outlining the scope of Mueller’s investigation.