The comments came during a wide ranging conversation with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum about the Justice Department’s new asset forfeiture policy, his recommendation to fire FBI Director James B. Comey and his appointment of a special counsel to lead the Russia investigation.

Rosenstein sought to assure people that the special counsel, former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, was operating with some degree of independence from the Justice Department, though he also was getting the cooperation he needed.

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But Rosenstein did not go to great pains to defend the special counsel team when pressed about whether he was bothered that several people on it had donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“The Department of Justice, we judge by results, and so my view about that is: We’ll see if they do the right thing,” Rosenstein said. He said he had not been involved in Mueller’s hiring decisions.

Around the same time the interview aired, the New York Times published an article about an interview with Trump in which the president said he would not have appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation. It was Sessions’s recusal that led Rosenstein to be in a position to appoint Mueller.

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“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else,” President Trump said, according to the New York Times.

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Trump also criticized Mueller’s office for having conflicts of interest — noting that Mueller had replaced Comey, whom Trump fired. He noted Rosenstein, too, had recommended Comey be fired, then appointed Mueller, who is investigating whether the president obstructed justice.

“Well, that’s a conflict of interest,” Trump said, according to the Times. “Do you know how many conflicts of interests there are?”

Trump also noted that Baltimore, where Rosenstein served as U.S. attorney before Trump appointed him as deputy attorney general, had “very few Republicans.”

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Asked by The Washington Post at an unrelated briefing earlier Wednesday on how he could maintain his authority over Mueller when he might become a witness, Rosenstein declined to say.

“Going to have to move on to the next question. Not going to be talking about that,” Rosenstein said.

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In his interview with Fox, Rosenstein did offer sentiments that might please the president, suggesting, for example, he did not approve of Comey’s engineering a leak of information about a request from the president to shut down the bureau’s probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Rosenstein said in an interview with Fox News that those who work for the Justice Department have an obligation to keep documents about ongoing matters confidential, though he took pains to stress he was not commenting on any particular case.

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Asked by Fox News’s Martha MacCallum whether it would “ever be proper” for the FBI director to “make notes of a conversation in that regard and leak them to the press,” Rosenstein responded, “As a general propositioner, you have to understand the Department of Justice. We take confidentiality seriously, so when we have memoranda about our ongoing matters, we have an obligation to keep that confidential.”

When MacCallum said she interpreted his answer as indicating he would not approve the release of a memo about a conversation with the president, the deputy attorney general reiterated his position.

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“As a general position, I think it is quite clear. It’s what we were taught, all of us as prosecutors and agents,” Rosenstein said.

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Comey has acknowledged that he asked a friend to share with the media the content of a memo he wrote about an interaction with Trump in which Trump told him of Flynn: “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” The request, by Comey’s account, came after a meeting in the Oval Office, and the president first cleared the room of other officials.

Comey said he engineered the leak “because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel” in the probe of possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. Comey got his wish. After the New York Times reported on the leaked material, Rosenstein appointed Mueller to lead the investigation.

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An attorney for Comey declined to comment.

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That Rosenstein does not approve of Comey’s behavior is perhaps no surprise. Rosenstein wrote a memo that lambasted Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, laying out the case that Comey should be replaced as FBI director. The memo was initially cited by White House officials as a reason that Trump fired him, though the president later said he intended to do so no matter what leaders in the Justice Department recommended.

Rosenstein declined to say to Fox News whose idea it was originally to fire Comey, saying he was “not going to be talking publicly about anything that may be within the scope of the ongoing investigation.” Rosenstein said he was concerned personally with Comey’s public statements on the Clinton email probe and stood by his own memo.



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After Comey was fired, Mueller began investigating whether the president might have attempted to obstruct justice. Given Rosenstein’s role in Comey’s firing, it seems possible that he could become a witness in that case. Rosenstein can remove Mueller or veto his decisions, although he does not have day-to-day supervisory authority over the investigation. Rosenstein told Fox News that he had not “personally been involved in any decisions” about personnel on the case, and he was “not doing any micromanagement.”



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In his interview with Fox News, Rosenstein said he appointed Mueller “based upon his reputation” and noted there was “bipartisan support for his integrity.”

Sessions, a strong supporter of Trump during the campaign and who has recused himself from the Russia probe, had previously told “Fox & Friends” that Mueller was “entitled lawfully, I guess at this point, to hire who he desires, but I think he should look for people who have strength and credibility by all people.”