Rod Rosenstein
Rod Jay Rosenstein is an American attorney who served as the 37th United States deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2019. Prior to his appointment, he served as a United States attorney for the District of Maryland. At the time of his confirmation as deputy attorney general in April 2017, he was the longest-serving U.S. attorney. Rosenstein had also been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2007, but his nomination was never considered by the U.S. Senate.
President Donald Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General on February 1, 2017. Rosenstein was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 2017. In May 2017, at Trump's behest, he authored a memo that Trump then cited as the basis for his decision to dismiss FBI Director James Comey.
In May 2018, Rosenstein reportedly told the five U.S. Attorneys in districts along the border with Mexico, where refugees were concerned, that they should not "be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child." The directive, issued as part of the Trump administration family separation policy, led to the separation of thousands of small children from their parents, many of whom were seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing violence in Central America.
Following the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Comey's dismissal, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and related matters. Rosenstein previously assumed authority over the parallel FBI probe after Sessions recused himself over misleading remarks he made to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary during his confirmation process. The New York Times reported Rosenstein prevented the FBI and Mueller from investigating Trump's personal and financial dealings in Russia. On November 7, 2018, Trump transferred this oversight to acting United States Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. Following the resignation of Jeff Sessions as United States Attorney General at the request of President Donald Trump, Rosenstein also served as acting United States Attorney General in his capacity as United States Deputy Attorney General for a few hours on November 7, 2018, pursuant to, until Trump signed an executive order naming Matthew Whitaker as acting United States Attorney General later that day.
Rosenstein submitted his resignation as deputy attorney general on April 29, 2019, which took effect on May 11, 2019. In 2020, he joined the law firm King & Spalding as a partner in its "Special Matters and Government Investigations" practice.
Early life and education
Rosenstein was born in 1965 to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia. His father, Robert, ran a small business, whilst his mother, Gerri Rosenstein, was a bookkeeper and local school board president. Rod grew up in Lower Moreland Township, Pennsylvania. Rosenstein graduated from Lower Moreland High School. His sister, Nancy Messonnier, is a physician who was the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2016 to 2021.Rosenstein attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in economics and Phi Beta Kappa membership. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated in 1989 with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.
Career
Early career
After law school, Rosenstein was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1989 to 1990. He then joined the United States Department of Justice through the Attorney General's Honors Program. From 1990 to 1993, he prosecuted public corruption cases as a trial attorney with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, the latter of which was led by then Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller.During the Clinton Administration, Rosenstein served as counsel to Deputy Attorney General Philip B. Heymann and Special Assistant to Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Jo Ann Harris. Rosenstein then worked in the United States Office of the Independent Counsel under Ken Starr on the Whitewater investigation into President Bill Clinton. As an Associate Independent Counsel from 1995 to 1997, he was co-counsel in the trial of three defendants who were convicted of fraud, and he supervised the investigation that found no basis for criminal prosecution of White House officials who had obtained FBI background reports.
United States Attorney Lynne A. Battaglia hired Rosenstein as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland in 1997.
From 2001 to 2005, Rosenstein served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice. He coordinated the tax enforcement activities of the Tax Division, the U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the IRS, and he supervised 90 attorneys and 30 support employees. He oversaw civil litigation and served as the acting head of the Tax Division when Assistant Attorney General Eileen J. O'Connor was unavailable, and he personally briefed and argued civil appeals in several federal appellate courts.
U.S. Attorney
President George W. Bush nominated Rosenstein to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland on May 23, 2005. He took office on July 12, 2005, after the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination. He was the only U.S. Attorney retained by President Barack Obama.As United States Attorney, he oversaw federal civil and criminal litigation, assisted with federal law enforcement strategies in Maryland, and presented cases in the U.S. District Court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder directed Rosenstein to investigate leaks regarding the U.S.'s Stuxnet operation, which sabotaged Iran's nuclear program; as a result of the investigation, former U.S. Marine Corps General James Cartwright pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and acknowledged leaking information about the operation to New York Times journalist David E. Sanger. During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, Rosenstein successfully prosecuted leaks of classified information, corruption, murders and burglaries, and was "particularly effective taking on corruption within police departments."
Rosenstein secured several convictions against prison guards in Baltimore for conspiring with the Black Guerrilla Family. He indicted Baltimore police officers Wayne Jenkins, Momodu Gondo, Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor, and Maurice Ward for racketeering. Rosenstein, with the aid of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Drug Enforcement Administration, secured convictions in large scale narcotics cases in the District of Maryland, including the arrest and conviction of Terrell Plummer, Richard Christopher Byrd, and Yasmine Geen Young.
The Attorney General appointed Rosenstein to serve on the Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, which evaluates and recommends policies for the Department of Justice. He was vice-chair of the Violent and Organized Crime Subcommittee and a member of the Subcommittees on White Collar Crime, Sentencing Issues and Cyber/Intellectual Property Crime. He also served on the Attorney General's Anti-Gang Coordination Committee.
Attorney General Eric Holder appointed Rosenstein to prosecute General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for leaking to reporters. Cartwright pled guilty, but he was later pardoned.
Rosenstein served as the U.S. Attorney in Maryland during a period in which homicides decreased by approximately one-third, in other words, double the decline at the national level. Additionally, the robbery and aggravated assault rates fell faster than the national average. According to Thiru Vignarajah, the former deputy attorney general of Maryland, "Collaboration between prosecutors, police, and the community combined with a dogged focus on violent repeat offenders was the anchor of Rosenstein's approach." Rosenstein regarded the heroin and opioid epidemic as a public health crisis, hired a re-entry specialist to help ex-offenders adjust to life outside of prison, and prosecuted several individual cases of corrupt police officers.
Judicial nomination
In 2007, President Bush nominated Rosenstein to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Rosenstein was a Maryland resident at the time. Maryland's Democratic United States Senators, Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, blocked Rosenstein's nomination, claiming he did not have strong enough ties to Maryland.Deputy Attorney General of the United States
Nomination and confirmation
President Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General on February 1, 2017. He was one of the 46 United States Attorneys ordered on March 10, 2017, to resign by Attorney General Jeff Sessions; Trump declined to accept his resignation. Rosenstein was confirmed by the Senate on April 25, 2017, by a vote of 94–6.Comey memo
On May 8, 2017, President Trump directed Sessions and Rosenstein to make a case against FBI Director James Comey in writing. The next day, Rosenstein handed a memo to Sessions providing the basis for Sessions's recommendation to President Trump that Comey be dismissed. In his memo Rosenstein asserted that the FBI must have "a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them". He ends with an argument against keeping Comey as FBI director, on the grounds that he was given an opportunity to "admit his errors" but that there is no hope that he will "implement the necessary corrective actions."Some critics argued that Rosenstein, in enabling the dismissal of Comey amid an investigation into Russian election interference, damaged his own reputation.
After administration officials cited Rosenstein's memo as the main reason for Comey's dismissal, an anonymous source in the White House said that Rosenstein threatened to resign. Rosenstein denied the claim and said he was "not quitting," when asked directly by a reporter from Sinclair Broadcast Group.
On May 17, Rosenstein told the Senate he knew that Comey would be fired before he wrote his memo that the White House initially used as justification for President Trump firing Comey.
The New York Times reported in August 2020 that concerns about a possible counterintelligence threat posed by Trump's personal and financial dealings with Russia increased after his May 9 firing of Comey, prompting the FBI to open an inquiry separate from the Crossfire Hurricane and the incipient Mueller investigation. Within days, Rosenstein curtailed that inquiry, giving the bureau the impression that Mueller would pursue it, though Rosenstein instructed Mueller not to, effectively ending the inquiry.