Cut the Head Off the Snake: Rat Rosenstein Must Pay Heavy Price for Russia-gate Conspiracy

When tackling an issue as ubiquitous and all-encompassing as deep state corruption, it is difficult to know where to begin. There have been thousands of officials within the federal bureaucracy who have engaged in outright criminal behavior and putting them all to justice is a daunting task.

The process must begin by making a swift example of the person issuing the orders, an example that will resonate swiftly down the chain of command. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was the man who personally ordered much of the Russia-gate frame job on Trump, and for a restoration of faith in our government he must pay a heavy price for his treachery.

After Trump’s first Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Trump/Russia investigation in cowardly fashion, this gave Rosenstein, Sessions’ Trump-hating deputy, full control over the entire investigation. Rosenstein outsourced his authority over the Russia-gate investigation to special counsel Robert Mueller, a deep state ringer who was brought in to handle the dirty work, just four months into Trump’s presidency. The Mueller investigation would make a farce of federal law enforcement and be an albatross around Trump’s neck for most of his presidency.

The litany of abuses during the Mueller probe, including the hostile indictments of different Trump associates and a total inversion of the notion of innocent until proven guilty, stemmed from Rosenstein’s leadership as essentially the acting AG. Rosenstein was as partisan of a hack as any in the DOJ, evidenced by his actions that have come to light in recent years due to Freedom of Information Act disclosures and Congressional testimony. Public records gathered by Judicial Watch showed that Rosenstein contemplated wearing a wireduring privileged conversations with President Trump and wasallegedly devising ways to remove Trump from office undemocratically using the 25th Amendment of the Constitution.

Rosenstein was no mere pawn in a greater conspiracy but rather the orchestrator of the entire sordid saga. Rosenstein reportedlylooked the other way as he learned about the dubious nature of the Trump/Russia hoax. He had a meeting with former senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie was a Hillary Clinton-backed operative working for FusionGPS with Christopher Steele on the infamous dossier that was the genesis of the infamous Trump/Russia hoax. Bruce Ohr laundered bogusintelligence created by his wife to the FBI in an apparent violation of conflict-of-interest law. Ohr testified that he divulged this information to Rosenstein who did nothing as his agenda was to destroy President Trump even if that meantoverlooking potentially criminal behavior.

The DOJ under Rosenstein was revealed last year for subpoenaing Google to access the telephone metadata and text message transcripts of Jason Foster, who was chief investigative counsel to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time. The Senate Judiciary Committee was investigating DOJ impropriety, and Rosenstein was apparently looking for dirt on Foster to undermine his discoveries.

"We write to express deep concern regarding recent revelations that the Department of Justice engaged in a campaign of covert surveillance of the personal communications of attorneys advising congressional oversight committees," a letter addressed to Biden AG Merrick Garland by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) stated. "The decision by unelected government bureaucrats to investigate the elected congressional representatives and congressional staff trying to hold them accountable is a true attack on our democracy."

Rosenstein also threatened a staffer from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the letter claimed Rosenstein may have targeted Democrats as well with his surveillance thuggery.

"This extensive and far-reaching effort to use grand jury subpoenas and perhaps other means to gather the personal communications records of congressional staffers and their families with little or no legitimate predicate is absolutely unacceptable," they wrote. "The executive branch overreach and gross violation of separation of powers apparent in this case no doubt shocks the conscience and shakes public confidence in our justice system to its core."

An independent investigation from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released earlier this week confirmed that DOJ behavior under the leadership of Rosenstein, through snooping into the private affairs of Congressional investigators and leaking sensitive information to the press, undermined the lawful powers of Congress to investigate the Executive Branch.

“[W]e believe that using compulsory process to obtain such records when based solely on the close proximity in time between access to the classified information and subsequent publication of the information— which was the case with most of the process issued for non-content communications records of congressional staff in the investigations we examined—risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch because it exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely for conducting Congress’s constitutionally authorized oversight duties and creating, at a minimum, the appearance of inappropriate interference by the executive branch in legitimate oversight activity by the legislative branch,” the OIG report concluded.

Russia-gate would never have evolved from the hairbrained scheme of a flailing political campaign to a national scandal that undermined the will of the people and tarnished the federal government immeasurably without the enthusiastic complicity of Rod Rosenstein. As federal agents were conducting highly unethical, immoral and perhaps even treasonous behavior, Rosenstein and his hand-picked henchman Mueller were calling the shots. Rosenstein was the highest-ranking official leading the Russia-gate charge and cannot be allowed to evade justice.

Of course, “just following orders” was not accepted as an excuse at the Nuremberg Trials, and it should not be permissible to excuse deep state criminality now, but Rosenstein’s incarceration would send a strong message that nobody is untouchable no matter their political clout or connections. Rosenstein’s scalp on the wall, so to speak, would ring alarm bells for all lower-level bureaucrats signifying that they mustabide by the Constitution or face swift consequences. It may be impossible to remove every hack from the federal bureaucracy, but if enough examples are made, the vast majority will fall in line with the clean system. The imprisonment of Rat Rosenstein would demonstrate to the rank-and-file that reform, resignation or imprisonment are the only options.