With the Twelve departing on December 23, Rosen will head the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s final month in office, which could be a storm of political dust created by the lame-duck president to a former corporate lawyer, who still refuses to accept. And has made it clear that he wants his opponents to be prosecuted or even imprisoned.
The deputy attorney general always backs the department’s top appointee, but Rosen’s public profile is lower than typical. He has largely stayed out of the bar’s most controversial moments in the spotlight, as Trump’s allies overload attorneys’ career attorneys in the criminal proceedings of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
But Rose has stepped into major corporate lawsuits, including taking a central role against corporate payoff manufacturers and the tech community.
According to a Justice Department official who knows him, Rosen does not enjoy the kind of decision-making that puts him at the center of political turmoil. And it is not yet known whether he will join Trump or push back on behalf of a department where political appointments are going peacefully and career staff is preparing for the next administration.
“It’s not the kind of person who likes to make decisions,” the official said. “Burr is all about fire and fury. Rosen does things for the right reasons.”
“Rosen is calm, but strong,” another source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The judge’s office did not comment on whether Rose was acting as a lawyer.
Burr’s early departure was to Rosen, who served as Trump’s deputy secretary of transportation, and George W. Bush. He also served as the agency’s general adviser during the Bush administration, in an unusual position to lead the department as executive officer for one final month. The presidency.
The president-elect could have stayed in the potential job until Biden’s attorney general Pick was confirmed, as has happened in previous administration turnovers at the request of the incoming administration.
Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and Michael Mukasi, confirmed by the previous Senate, have been in the office of President Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively, until the last days, before handing over the department to their deputy AGO – now in Rosen’s position. Could.
Arguments behind the scenes
Rosen’s deliberate approach has been in his private practice of handling complex lawsuits for companies for decades. At the judge, Bar was treating Rosen more like his adviser, according to a Justice Department official, the Attorney General, who was involved in the moment of paying the most attention to the department rather than stepping aside to fully manage Rosen, a Justice Department official said.
“Two decades ago in the Justice Department, Democratic political adviser Julie Rodin Zebrac said, ‘Bair has been on stage all the time. Therefore, we do not know how much Rose played a role in many important decisions. “And the former deputy attorney general served as deputy chief. We don’t really know a ton about it.”
Rosen is also somewhat of a mystery to attorneys working outside the Chief Justice building, according to current and former department officials who spoke to CNN.
Documents from the Department of International Justice, which have been released by the department in recent months under the Freedom of Information Act, provide little indication of why Rosen was involved behind the scenes. For example, he was informed of the outcome in Stone’s sentencing department, but it was not clear how much he was involved in the bar’s choice to print public prosecutors on the case.
Rosen’s lack of prosecuting experience was an issue when he first took on the role of deputy, but he led a major prosecution by the Justice Department, including the anti-Google anti-trust case and the criminal petition deal with Xicontin maker Pardu Pharma.
Attempts to frame a lawsuit against Google, which is ongoing, focus on Rosen’s office fees, according to two former Justice Department officials. When the lawsuits were announced in October, Rose told reporters that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to the results Google could face.
During his Senate confirmation to the position of Deputy Attorney General, Rose promised to push back against any undue influence he might face. Rosen was asked in writing by a senator how he would react if the president asked him to do anything illegal. Rose first noted that he thought “this is not likely to be a fictional scenario”, then wrote, “If I had been instructed to do something illegal anyway, I would have resigned rather than make an illegal order.”
During his Senate confirmation hearing in April 2019, he said, “If the right answer is to say no, I won’t say no.”
What Rosen might face in Trump’s final week
Rosen could face the same kind of political pressure as Bar and Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, as the president continues to press publicly for an investigation into voter fraud, accusing him of crimes for his supporters. The reality of the election and the outcome to investigators who conducted the 2016 U.S. Kept an eye on Russian interference in the election.
Burr’s departure comes in an interview with the Associated Press that angered Trump, where Barr revealed that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and there are reports that the attorney general kept quiet until after Hunter Biden’s investigation. Election.
The issue of voter fraud re-emerged in Burr’s resignation letter on Monday, with the attorney general saying he had corrected Trump on the Justice Department’s review of voter fraud that day and “and how these allegations will continue.” The department did not elaborate on why that review could have taken place, and state and federal judges have repeatedly rejected Trump’s claim that there is widespread evidence of widespread voter fraud this year.
The president-elect’s second son – and the president-elect’s second son – could also press the Justice Department over Hunter Biden’s investigation, and for the results of now-special adviser John Durham, which was initially conducted by the bar to investigate the FBI’s conduct of the investigation. And it has been used by Republicans to cast doubt on the findings of the Trump campaign’s acceptance of Russian intervention in 2016.
Republicans on Capitol Hill will already call for a special adviser on Hunter Biden. The appointment of one leads the investigation with a special need for a criminal investigation with the plaintiff, puts him half a step away and protects him in some respects from the next presidential administration.
Already, federal attorneys in Delaware are working with IRS and FBI investigators to introduce sub-pence and interview Hunter Biden and his dealings with China on tax-related issues, CNN reported.
“There could be all this pressure on Rosen in the final days,” a Justice Department official said.
This story has been updated to note that the Justice Department declined to comment.
CNN’s Christina Carrega contributed to this report.
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