WASHINGTON — Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is facing questions Wednesday at a Senate hearing about the origins of Robert Mueller’s investigation and the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign.
In his opening statement, Rosenstein defended his decision to appoint Mueller as a special counsel overseeing the investigation and approval of applications through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.
Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.
“Every application that I approved appeared to be justified based on the facts it alleged, and the FBI was supposed to be following protocols to ensure that every fact was verified,” Rosenstein told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Rosenstein, however, then acknowledged the findings from investigative reviews from last December and this past March that he said “revealed that the FBI was not following the written protocols, and that ‘significant errors’ appeared in applications filed in connection with the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the code name for the FBI counterintelligence probe.
The former deputy attorney general said that the Department of Justice “must take remedial action” whenever agents or prosecutors “make serious mistakes or engage in misconduct.”
“While it is necessary to correct mistakes and punish wrongdoers, it should not go unsaid today that our law enforcement agencies are filled with men and women who act with integrity,” he added. “As we watch them deal with extraordinarily difficult challenges throughout the country, we should take this opportunity to let them know that they have our appreciation and support.”
Rosenstein explained that he appointed Mueller to lead the Russia investigation after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the probe and the firing of James Comey as FBI director because he was “concerned that the public would not have confidence in the investigation and that the acting FBI director was not the right person to lead it.”
“I decided that appointing a special counsel was the best way to complete the investigation appropriately and promote public confidence in its conclusions. As we now know, the eventual conclusions were that Russians committed crimes seeking to influence the election and Americans did not conspire with them,” Rosenstein said.
His testimony comes after former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell recently declassified documents that Republicans claim showed that the Obama administration was specifically targeting Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser. It also comes after the Justice Department recently recommended that the judge overseeing Flynn’s case dismiss the criminal charges against him.
