This week when Rosenstein goes before Congress, the Republicans need to ask him how he can permit Mueller to continue to carry out the Special Counsel role when he has a conflict of interest with respect to Comey. The whole point of a Special Counsel is have someone with no conflict of interests.
They need to ask him what role Comey and Mueller had in encouraging the appointment and preparing the language of the appointment letter.
Based on Comey’s testimony that there has been no and is no basis for a criminal investigation of Trump conspiring with the Russian government to hack the election, Rosenstein needs to amend the appointment letter to remove the collusion with Russia investigation.
Because of Comey’s behavior in leaking and bringing about a Special Counsel as apparent retaliation against Trump, and because of Mueller’s conflict of interest, Rosenstein needs to amend the appointment letter to remove Mueller from dealing in any way with Comey’s allegations and Comey’s own possible crimes. Mueller would be left with the Flynn foreign agent registration and the Manafort investigation regarding Ukraine. And it may be that even those do not raise a conflict of interest such that the regular DOJ cannot handle them.
Imo, this whole thing was orchestrated. Rosenstein’s recommendation to fire Comey and then the appointment of special counsel.
Comey knew his firing was only a matter of time, he wanted to make it count and bring down Trump in the process.
What makes me really queasy is Sessions appointing Rosentein as deputy AG. That’s what needs to be looked into. I’m assuming Rosentein brought up the idea of a special counsel with Sessions, why did he sign off on the idea?