It's possible but it's not a sure thing, for one thing, I doubt he'll do it. If he does, it's more than likely that Trump will fire him, he's that stupid and conceited, after yesterday's interview it's clear he will continue to figure he's entitled to do in the presidency what he did on his phony reality show, The Apprentice.
So, I doubt Rosenstein will do it unless he is convinced that the attempt of the Ivy League, old boy and girl network will not be able to pull his fat out of the fire that he willingly stepped into.
So, back to yesterday's topic and a new article trying to do that by Slate's Leon Neyfakh (Harvard).
Rod Rosenstein could be making more than $1 million a year right now working at the law firm of his choice. So why is this impeccably pedigreed, widely admired former prosecutor letting himself be humiliated, used, and discredited by Donald Trump?
The answer could be naked ambition: For all the cautious optimism that Rosenstein’s nomination as deputy attorney general inspired in Trump critics, it’s possible the boy scout from Maryland never intended to bring his famous sense of integrity and professionalism to his influential new job at the Justice Department. Maybe he sold himself on the idea that he’d be serving “at the pleasure of the president” and decided he’d do whatever he had to do to keep his boss happy.
That’s one explanation for why Mr. Conscientious wrote that strange memo about James Comey. He knew full well that his sober, serious-minded complaints about the FBI director’s handling of the Clinton email investigation would be used as cover for making a fundamentally corrupt personnel decision, and he decided to lend the president his hard-won credibility the way a guy with a clean record might help a buddy with a checkered past hide a murder weapon.
Maybe I’m naïve, but I have a hard time believing that version of the story. Rosenstein has worked in the Justice Department for too long—27 years—and his reputation in the legal world is too solid for him to be a craven and amoral functionary. It’s more likely, in my view, that Rosenstein went into this job sincerely thinking, or at least hoping, that he could do some good in the Trump administration. Just like all the people who told me they were happy there would be an adult running the Justice Department’s day-to-day operations, Rosenstein probably believed he could be a steadying force at a time when the federal government—and the DOJ in particular—badly needs one.
I don't know why Rod Rosenstein did what he did, what he so obviously and knowingly did, writing up an excuse for Trump to fire Comey as Comey was leading an investigation into wrongdoing and possible criminality by Trump and his lackeys. BUT THE OVERWHELMING FACT IS THAT HE DID IT. It is more credible that he did it with the intention of hampering the investigation - the most obvious real effect of the firing - for whatever reason, than it is that he was a babe in arms as he was doing it. You don't get to claim he was the essential man, the grown-up, the adult and then let him off because he's supposed to be a friggin' boy scout.
As I said, he's got one chance to disprove the belief that he's acted as part of a cover up and that is to appoint a credible, vigorous and disinterested special prosecutor to do the investigation that his actions have impeded.
I will state that I'm no fan of James Comey who I think showed obvious partisan, Republican bias in relation to the phony scandal trumped up around Hillary Clinton's e-mail. I agree with her that Comey probably got Trump elected through his October surmise. I think Barack Obama showed weakness and bad judgement in appointing Comey as head of the FBI. Obama should have fired him, he should never have gone along with the DC Village idiots who pushed him - the same idiots who pushed Rosenstein as a boy scout. But, like it or not, he was overseeing one of the most important investigations into crime and treason against democracy, against the United States and with Trump's interview declarations, it is clear that his firing was part of an attempt to scuttle a criminal investigation into about the most serious of crimes - short of war crimes - that any American president has ever credibly been held to have committed.
What Comey did in nudging the election to Trump was really bad, what Rod Rosenstein did is worse because in the hundred plus days of the Trump regime, there can be no doubts, no granting of any benefit of the doubts about how dangerous he and his entire crew are to American democracy and the world.
Apropos of yesterday's posts, in making his argument, Neyfakh cites various people, Oona Hathaway (Harvard - Yale Law), Ross Douthat (Harvard) and David Luban (Yale). Given that both Trump and Rod Rosenstein graduated from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Rosenstein is a product of Harvard Law, as far as I can tell, the only person cited in the Slate Article who isn't an Ivy League product is James Comey and he went to the might-as-well be Ivy University of Chicago for his law degree. He is a bit of an outlier in that he also went to a public university as an undergrad, William and Mary. Maybe that's got something to do with why the Ivy doesn't have his back.
"Update 4: I'm told he's totally out of control over this post over at Duncan's (PhD econ from the second least of those "lesser Ivies" whose grad Ted Cruz thought were too icky for his Harvard Law study group, Brown) blog."
ReplyDeleteThose voices in your head are getting louder? Here's a hint, Sparky -- if one of them is a dog who tells you to kills somebody, seek help. :-)
It is one thing to be critical of Comey; I certainly was.
ReplyDeleteIt's another thing to fire him. The FBI director serves a 10 year term for a reason, one part of which is to provide stability to the FBI, the other part of which is to provide as much independence as is reasonable. (That independence is too deliberately protected in the FBI practice of investigating all incidents involving an agent and a dead non-agent, and in 100% of the cases exonerating the agent. Anything can be too much of a good thing.)
So you don't fire the FBI director out of the blue, and certainly not for the flimsy reasons stated in the Rosenstein memo. A memo that wasn't anywhere near a legal memo, and, as some said, was merely a press release. Rosenstein putting his name to that, alone, was enough to discredit his reputation from here on out, IMHO.
Trump has the ability to fire Comey; whether he should have exercised that ability, is the question. How he exercised it, and why, is the question. Is Rosenstein sullied by this? Well, you gotta dance with the one what brung ya. The minute Rosenstein stayed for the change of Administrations, he started dancing with the new guy.
He's got no one to blame but himself for that.