In bid to impeach Rod Rosenstein, House Republicans are abusing power to protect Trump Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan are trying to impeach Rod Rosenstein in an effort to protect Donald Trump. That is an abuse of power and trust.

Fred Wertheimer and Norman Eisen | Opinion contributors

Even as President Donald Trump was standing with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week — and against his own intelligence agencies and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — a lower-profile but equally reprehensible attack was unfolding in Washington. Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan are considering articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Mueller’s probe.

This effort to impeach Rosenstein is unprecedented, baseless and a gross abuse of the impeachment process.

In the 229-year history of the Constitution, there has never been an impeachment of an executive branch official at a sub-cabinet level, such as Rosenstein. This is for good reason. The impeachment process was intended by the framers to be used only in rare cases; it was never meant to be used to settle policy differences between an executive branch agency and Congress, no matter how serious.

For months now, Trump has relentlessly attacked Rosenstein and the Mueller investigation. He has been aided and abetted in his efforts by key House Republicans who are acting as members of his defense team rather than as representatives of the American people and members of an independent branch of government.

Trampling norms to protect Trump

The goal of all of this is to disrupt, discredit, undermine and, if possible, get rid of Rosenstein, eliminate the Mueller investigation and — ultimately — protect Trump. In their zeal, House Republicans have chosen to trample on the norms of our criminal justice system and attempt to politicize a Justice Department criminal investigation in ways we have not seen since the 1970s Watergate scandals.

The irresponsible role being played by House Republicans was highlighted two weeks ago when all but one of them voted for a resolution demanding that the Justice Department give them confidential internal documents in the ongoing Mueller investigation. One request from California Rep. Devin Nunes was for disclosure of “confidential human sources” in the criminal investigation. The other request was for documents “connected to the FBI’s use in its Russia probe of a sensitive surveillance program, known as FISA, to monitor a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.”

The Justice Department does not release this kind of highly sensitive information in the middle of a criminal investigation because it can seriously compromise the investigation if the information ends up in the hands of the people being investigated. And in this case, there is every reason to believe that any documents Nunes receives will quickly reach Trump, who is a subject of the investigation.

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Last year, Nunes falsely claimed he had classified information that showed certain individuals had been improperly unmasked by Obama Administration officials. He further claimed he had received the information from “whistle blowers” whose identities “he needed to protect so others would feel safe going to the committee with sensitive information.” In rushing to the White House to present the documents to Trump, Nunes also claimed, “The president needs to know that these intelligence reports are out there, and I have a duty to tell him that.”

In fact, it was later revealed that Nunes got the information from White House officials, not from “whistle blowers” who “he needed to protect.” And Trump already had the information that Nunes supposedly rushed over to the White House to present to him. In light of this charade, there is no way Nunes can be trusted with confidential and sensitive investigative documents relating to Mueller’s ongoing criminal investigation.

House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee recently spent hours harassing and attacking Rosenstein for not turning over additional documents to Congress, though it would be improper for them to receive them at this point. Jordan of Ohio and Meadows of North Carolina have been particularly irresponsible in threatening Rosenstein with impeachment if he does not agree to their improper requests. Their goal here appears clear: to impose demands on Rosenstein that he cannot responsibly meet in order to provide phony cover for Trump to remove him and replace him with a Trump loyalist.

Rosenstein’s response: “The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

Impeachment call is an abuse of power

The House Republican attacks are raw politics that recall a meritless effort by Jordan and Meadows in the last Congress to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Their colleagues killed their impeachment resolution on a bipartisan 342-72 vote. South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy offered another example of blatant politics when he told Rosenstein at the Judiciary hearing that it was time to end the Mueller investigation. “If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury...Whatever you got, finish it the hell up,” he said.

Mueller has been investigating for a little more than a year. During this period, he has indicted or obtained guilty pleas from 32 individuals and three companies. This includes 191 criminal charges brought in active indictments or plea agreements. Gowdy spent two and a half years investigating Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi affair and came up with nothing: no indictments, no plea bargains, no convictions and no findings of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Gowdy has the chutzpah to attack the Mueller investigation for taking too long.

It is important to cut to the heart of the matter.

Key House Republicans are abusing their offices and the public trust to blindly provide protection for Trump. They are doing so instead of working to get to the bottom of the worst foreign attack on American elections in our history.

They need to be called on their scandalous efforts to undermine the Mueller investigation and ignore Russia’s cyber invasion of our democracy. A bipartisan outcry greeted Trump’s Helsinki betrayals. We should be hearing protests at least as loud and bipartisan in response to this parallel — and equally unmerited — attack on American law enforcement right here at home.

Fred Wertheimer is founder and president of Democracy 21. Norman Eisen is chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a senior fellow at Brookings and author of the forthcoming book “The Last Palace.” Follow them on Twitter: @FredWertheimer and @NormEisen