According to a bombshell report, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is recommending the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence open an internal investigation of its GOP staffers’ conduct.
Rosenstein allegedly intimidated Intel Committee staffers amid his ongoing clash with Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) during a private meeting in January involving senior FBI and Justice Department officials.
One staffer claimed that the nation’s second most powerful lawman threatened to “unleash the full prosecutorial power of the state against us.” (Fox News)
“The DAG [Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein] criticized the Committee for sending our requests in writing and was further critical of the Committee’s request to have DOJ/FBI do the same when responding,” the committee’s then-senior counsel for counterterrorism Kash Patel wrote to the House Office of General Counsel. “Going so far as to say that if the Committee likes being litigators, then ‘we [DOJ] too [are] litigators, and we will subpoena your records and your emails,’ referring to HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and Congress overall.”
A second House committee staffer at the meeting backed up Patel’s account, writing: “Let me just add that watching the Deputy Attorney General launch a sustained personal attack against a congressional staffer in retaliation for vigorous oversight was astonishing and disheartening. … Also, having the nation’s #1 (for these matters) law enforcement officer threaten to ‘subpoena your calls and emails’ was downright chilling.”
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Representatives with both the DOJ and FBI disputed the account in the emails.
“The FBI disagrees with a number of characterizations of the meeting as described in the excerpts of a staffer’s emails provided to us by Fox News,” the FBI said in a statement.
This alleged interaction may explain why the relationship between the Justice Department and GOP-led House has deteriorated to such an extent.
AAN Staff
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