Who is Rod Rosenstein? Things to know about the deputy US attorney general
Update, Sept. 24, 2018: Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is set to meet with President Donald Trump on Thursday to talk about whether he will keep his job at the Department of Justice, a job that includes overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Talk that Rosenstein may resign came after The New York Times released a report on Friday saying that Rosenstein suggested to other FBI officials that he thought about secretly recording Trump “to expose the chaos consuming the administration,” and then exploring whether the president’s Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment to get Trump out of office.
This story will be updated. The original story from April 10, 2018, is below.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein personally signed off on the FBI raid of President Donald Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing unidentified sources.
The decision enraged Trump, according to the Times, and renewed speculation that the veteran Republican prosecutor might be dismissed from the Department of Justice.
Rosenstein made headlines last month after a partially redacted memo surfaced showing that he authorized special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate allegations that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort colluded with Russian government officials who interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The president has frequently railed against Mueller’s investigation, which he has said amounts to a “witch hunt.”
A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2018
Here are some things to know about Rosenstein:
- Rosenstein was sworn in on April 26, 2017, to serve as the 37th deputy attorney general of the United States.
- He is a registered Republican.
- Rosenstein earned his bachelor's degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. He earned his law degree three years later at Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
- Rosenstein joined the Justice Department in 1990, through the Attorney General's Honors program. He prosecuted public corruption cases with the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ's Criminal Division until 1993. The division was led by Mueller, who then served as assistant attorney general.
- Rosenstein was among the prosecutors chosen to work under independent counsel Ken Starr in the 1990s during the Whitewater investigation into then-President Bill Clinton, according to The New York Times.
- President George W. Bush nominated Rosenstein in 2005 to serve as U.S. attorney for Maryland. His nomination was unanimously confirmed, and he took office in July 2005. He was the longest-serving U.S. attorney in the country when he left the job in 2017 following his nomination to fill the deputy attorney general position, according to the Baltimore Sun.
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