Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the Justice Department’s handling of the special counsel’s still-secret report, saying Attorney General William Barr is “being as forthcoming as he can” about his process for redacting and releasing the roughly 400-page document.

In his first interview since the conclusion of the special counsel’s investigation, Mr. Rosenstein beat back suggestions that Mr. Barr is trying to mislead the public by releasing only a four-page summary of Robert Mueller’s investigation. The attorney general in that letter said the Mueller probe found President Trump and his campaign didn’t conspire with Russian interference in the 2016 election but reached no conclusion about whether the president obstructed justice. With the absence of a recommendation, Mr. Barr and Mr. Rosenstein determined Mr. Trump’s actions weren’t criminal.

Democrats have demanded access to the full report, which Mr. Barr said he would release, likely next week, after blacking out portions for sensitive information.

“He’s being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that he’s trying to mislead people, I think is just completely bizarre,” Mr. Rosenstein said.

Mr. Barr is under intense pressure to quickly produce the edited report amid concerns from Democrats that the attorney general, a longtime advocate of executive-branch authority, is seeking to protect the president from politically damaging information the report may contain. Their worries were heightened after reports that some investigators on Mr. Mueller’s team had told associates in recent days that they believe the report is more critical of Mr. Trump on the obstruction issue than Mr. Barr indicated in his summary. Mr. Rosenstein wouldn’t say why Mr. Mueller rendered no conclusion on that critical question.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has submitted his report on the Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr, but many of the details of that report may never be known to the public. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains why. Photo: Getty/AP

“It would be one thing if you put out a letter and said, ‘I’m not going to give you the report,’ ” Mr. Rosenstein said. “What he said is, ‘Look, it’s going to take a while to process the report. In the meantime, people really want to know what’s in it. I’m going to give you the top-line conclusions.’ That’s all he was trying to do.”


Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Barr, their top advisers and a member of Mr. Mueller’s team have been involved in reviewing the report for material related to intelligence sources, continuing investigations, grand-jury matters and the privacy of individuals not charged with crimes. Mr. Rosenstein wouldn’t say how it was going, only that the public should have “tremendous confidence” in Mr. Barr.

The rare interview in Mr. Rosenstein’s fourth-floor office at the Justice Department came in his waning days on the job, with the special counsel investigation he oversaw now complete and Mr. Trump’s nominee to replace him, Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen, awaiting confirmation by the Senate. After nearly 30 years in the department, Mr. Rosenstein, 54 years old, said he doesn’t know what he will do next, only that he hopes to start a new job at the end of the summer.

His remarks came one day after Mr. Barr said he would form a team to examine the origins of a 2016 counterintelligence investigation that conducted what he termed as “spying” on people associated with the Trump campaign, a characterization Democrats and some former Justice Department officials, including fired Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, found disturbing.

Speaking at a conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Mr. Comey said, “When I hear that kind of language used, it’s concerning, because the FBI and Department of Justice conduct court-ordered electronic surveillance. I have never thought of that as spying.”


It isn’t known whether Mr. Barr’s review will examine any of Mr. Rosenstein’s actions, namely that he approved an application to ask a court to grant continued surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had long been on the radar of U.S. counterintelligence for his communications with Russians.

Mr. Rosenstein wouldn’t comment on Mr. Barr’s inquiry of that counterintelligence probe, but he said generally that he is open to objective scrutiny and stands by his approval of the renewal.

Mr. Rosenstein has been under an unusually intense spotlight as the No. 2 Justice Department official, largely because of his decision to appoint Mr. Mueller early in his tenure, which drew repeated swipes from Mr. Trump and concerns among some of the president’s advisers that he would move to fire the deputy attorney general. Mr. Rosenstein said he has stayed on the job at Mr. Barr’s request, adding, “for me, it’s a real privilege.”

Early on, at Mr. Trump’s request, Mr. Rosenstein wrote a memo that the White House initially cited as grounds for firing Mr. Comey. On Thursday, he said he stands by the memo and has few regrets about his time in office.


“If you put something in writing, put your name on it and be prepared to stand behind it,” he said. “That’s been a theme of my career.”

—Dion Nissenbaum contributed to this article.

Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com