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Quote of the Day: Impeach Rosenstein
“Certainly Congress should not seek to wreck a criminal investigation, and should be open to acceptable compromises. But Congress shouldn’t let the mere fact of a criminal investigation lead it to step aside and shirk its core constitutional responsibility: holding the government accountable to the people.
“Impeachment is a perfectly appropriate means to this end, which is why the Constitution provides for it. True, the last appointed federal executive impeached by Congress was a cabinet member in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. But Congress impeached a judge as recently as 2010, and there are no constitutional exemptions for deputy attorneys general…”
–William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2018
It’s understandable that people cringe every time the word “impeachment” is used; the Democrats have made a practice of condemning Trump and assiduously searching for the means to impeach him. But Trump isn’t the one that I think can be accused of criminal activity; you can’t be impeached for bad manners. If a thorough investigation could be done on Rod Rosenstein, however, without the Department of Justice blocking every attempt to get the evidence, I think his guilt would be obvious. Many people forget that the DOJ was created by Congress and is subject to Congress’s oversight. That includes people like Rod Rosenstein.
The process of impeachment is intentionally arduous:
The House brings impeachment charges against federal officials as part of its oversight and investigatory responsibilities. Individual Members of the House can introduce impeachment resolutions like ordinary bills, or the House could initiate proceedings by passing a resolution authorizing an inquiry. The Committee on the Judiciary ordinarily has jurisdiction over impeachments, but special committees investigated charges before the Judiciary Committee was created in 1813. The committee then chooses whether to pursue articles of impeachment against the accused official and report them to the full House. If the articles are adopted (by simple majority vote), the House appoints Members by resolution to manage the ensuing Senate trial on its behalf. These managers act as prosecutors in the Senate and are usually members of the Judiciary Committee. The number of managers has varied across impeachment trials but has traditionally been an odd number. The partisan composition of managers has also varied depending on the nature of the impeachment, but the managers, by definition, always support the House’s impeachment action.
As difficult as it may be, it’s time to initiate impeachment proceedings. Congress should be able to identify the crime. Aren’t most of them lawyers?
Published in Politics
Forget Rosenstein- he is toast. Instead, start a movement to disbar Andrew Weissmann.
Susan, I think it is a great idea.
Whether or not he is removed from office, an impeachment of Rosenstein would be finally a chance for a public airing of the process that started this Special Counsel investigation where hopefully the truth would finally come out. The people need to be given the information on what happened so they can decide for themselves. So far the Justice Department under Rosenstein and Sessions has criminally refused to be in any way forthcoming about the evidence that started this investigation and has illegally resisted subpoenas from not only Congress, but the Senate and Federal Judges as well. No crime has been identified publicly to prosecute in the original scope which was required by the Special Counsel statute. A defendant has a right under our constitution to confront his accusers. How can a defendant defend himself if no crime is identified and his accusers are hidden from him. The Left and the Never Trumpers are really playing with fire with their long line of BS.
Contempt of Congress is nice, but Holder was held in contempt of Congress and nothing happened at all. Sessions will likely not respond to a contempt of Congress for Rosenstein in this case. He is that compromised.
That said, Rosenstein is guilty at a minimum of approving the extension of a fraudulent FISA warrant which he should have known was fraudulent. There also seems to be an unbelievably elaborate set up to manufacture evidence that was used to justify this Special Counsel investigation and the original fraudulent FISA warrant, as well as an elaborate cover up since that involved at a minimum Brennan and Comey, but also likely Strok, McCabe , Rosenstein and Mueller as well as others like Hillary and Obama.
And please don’t claim your DC Federal judge who says Mueller can do anything he wants without even seeing the scope is the last word, particularly since Judge Ellis hasn’t weighed in finally yet. Out of control Lefty judges issuing unconstitutional edicts are almost a dime a dozen now, so your DC judge in the end probably will not be the controlling voice.
Gary, Rosenstein is definitely not a ‘profile in courage”, but clearly a profile in criminality and deceit, along with the rest of the other cast of clowns and friends at the FBI, Justice and the CIA. Nearly everyday now, a new criminal misdeed of the Special Counsel is uncovered with your good buddy Rosenstein almost always lending it cover. The extent of the criminality is so vast that an open investigation is vitally important right now to expose all the crimes committed by the FBI, Justice and the CIA so they won’t be allowed to happen again.
It’s not often I like a Valuith post. But when I do, I go public. I think you are right. No way will our linguine spined Senators abide such a thing. Certainly not at 2/3’s. I would be surprised if we got 1/3.
I disavow the ” paranoid cook” part. They are not paranoid. He is corrupt.
This has nothing to do with food, cooking or being paranoid about either.
There is a political solution. Sessions could have everyone involved (Rosenstein, Mueller team,…) list out their conflicts of interest with Trump or Clinton. This would be almost everyone east of the Mississippi. Those would be made public and people would be pressured to recuse themselves. Any omission is a process crime and those folks get fired. Eventually some DOJ attorney in Idaho will be left and will shut down this farce.
Not too shabby! Please submit your application to the Trump defense team :)
Good. The sooner he is fired, the sooner he can do that.
Disbar Weissmann? Talk about jumping the shark!
The word is “kooks” not “cooks.” Damn spell check!
The Wall Street Journal has not been the same since it was bought by Rupert Murdoch and Gerald Baker was named as its Editor-In-Chief.
Agree. The current conversation about the DoJ policy view that a sitting POTUS cannot be indicted adds to that momentum. Mueller and Rosenstein work in that same DoJ and an attempt to indict would be as bad as Trump removing them.
It’s the only major newspaper that is not owned and run by the hardcore liberals. That’s undeniable. If you’d like to try, have at it.
It is true that Murdoch has been a bad influence on the WSJ, but you have no provided no basis for saying that Baker gave orders to go easy on Trump. All I see in the front page section is Trump hatred and (before the election) puffing up Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. The WSJ has become almost as conspiracy-obsessed as you are. I dropped my subscription, as I deemed it socially irresponsible to participate in paying for the kind of politics that you prefer.
After six months or so passed, I subscribed again for a one-year starter offer. Don’t know if I’ll continue it after the year is up.
To let you all know, I was unable to comment last night due to the mess up in the system. @max to the rescue! I’m back. Anyway, I wanted to thank @unsk for this excellent layout of the facts; you can see the accumulative effect and it’s awful! Thanks, @unsk. You’re hired!
An excellent suggestion, @dong! Of course, it assumes that people will acknowledge their conflicts of interest, hoping no one will find out.
By not prosecuting . . .
I like Cabinet officers, including the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General to inform the American people, at least in general, of what is taking place. These two have said the least publicly of any I can recall. I don’t mean specifics about investigations but we should at least have a sense of their support, or lack of support, for the POTUS.
Disagree, Bob. The point is that there needs to be a gun locked and loaded and ready for use on this. Mueller and Rosenstein are both as single individuals in control of this and are responsible for the irresponsible things the media is doing with this hijacking of Trump’s presidency. They feel invincible and can write books for big payoffs later. They are set for life and this threat (if not the implementation) of impeachment is the only thing on the table right now that can be used to control them.
The adults in the country need to do their damn jobs.
How many times is he allowed to withhold evidence and still be a ‘public servant’?
Adults Robert Mueller and Rob Rosenstein are doing their jobs.
No one, not even Trump, is above the law.
I agree that Sessions should tell Rosenstein to wrap it up since there will be no action by the DoJ regarding POTUS.
It looks as if your position is, in fact, support the ‘lawyers’ no matter what. Many here think this is pretty much what is wrong with America.
That DoJ policy is only a policy, not settled law.
Please recall that Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate coverup.
I agree that no one, not even Trump, is above the law.
That would also follow that Mueller and Rosenstein have to follow the law. Special Counsels are not put in place to create perjury traps, they exist to investigate and prosecute specific crimes. As no crime has been alleged, neither Mueller nor Rosenstein are follow the law or doing their jobs.
There there have been dozens of indictments for “specific crimes,” and five convictions so far for “specific crimes.”
Those things came out of the investigation, and good for them. Not one of those indictments was the reason for the investigation. The law is not lets dig in to this and see what crimes we can find. The law is, we think this specific crime was committed. We will investigate this named crime and may find other things to prosecute.
So they could say we think there was Treason (a crime) and investigate that and then also find Bank Fraud or tax violations and prosecute those as those crimes that were uncovered in a lawful investigation.
They can not legally say we want to investigate the election (having one is not a crime) and then dig up crimes.
Nope, you set the campaign toward ultimate objectives and lessons. Weissmann has been a slimeball and unethical prosecutor for a very long time, and his behavior in this case- the Svengali behind the Mueller nonsense- has illustrated it pretty well.
I am as Trump-skeptical as Gary is. But the conduct of this investigation, even though the target is sleazy, has been incredible. Even paranoids have real enemies, said Dr. Kissinger.
Okay, I will bite. Who are the players whose jerseys you are wearing?
Sorry, it doesn’t seem that way to me.
I am stealing this comment from America First at Breitbart:
“A lot of people say that the average FBI employee is good and works hard and so on but I call BS on that. Not a single person in the FBI has stepped up and blown the whistle on the massive amount of corruption going on there. They’re all protecting each other.”
A very good point.
This morning, you Progressive lefties paper of record, The New York Times, reported a massive spying campaign carried on by the usual suspects at the CIA led by Brennan, the FBI and Justice against the Trump campaign during the election, starting at least at beginning of July, if not April 2016, if any further confirmation of the deplorable and treasonous behavior of our government and its key employee’s is necessary at this point.
The time has long since passed when anyone should even try to defend these traitorous bastards in our government. But here we are with the same clowns marching forth trying to defend treason. It is simply appalling. All those involved in this massively illegal smear of Trump, likely including Hillary and Obama, should be tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, although a more just sentence would be death by firing squad which I know ain’t gonna happen.