By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is in charge of overseeing the special counsel investigation of Russian election interference, said Tuesday he is not intimidated by conservative Republican lawmakers who are threatening to impeach him.
“There have been people that have been making threats, publicly and privately, against me for quite some time, and I think they should understand by now: The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said at the Newseum in Washington. “Any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job. We have a responsibility and we take an oath. That’s the whole point.”
Rosenstein, who has been in President Trump’s crosshairs, struck a defiant and resolute tone as he fielded questions from the audience and even criticized lawmakers who drafted legislation to potentially impeach him.
“They can’t even resist leaking their own drafts,” the deputy attorney general said. “I saw that draft. I mean, I don’t know who wrote it. It really does illustrate, though, a really important distinction between the way we operate in the Department of Justice — if we’re going to accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses. We need to be prepared to prove our case in court. … We have people who are accountable. And so I just don’t have anything to say about documents like that that nobody has the courage to put their name on.”
