[The Federalist] On May 1, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein spoke at the Newseum, a Washington DC-area museum that features journalism-related exhibits. Laura Jarrett from CNN posed the following question: "As you think about the importance of separation of powers on Law Day here, any reaction to news that certain members of the House Freedom Caucus have talked about drafting Articles of Impeachment despite your best efforts to comply with their document requests?"Rosenstein had to pause to laugh before he could move on to answering the question.
"They can’t even resist leaking their own drafts," he said, then paused again as the entire audience joined his continued guffawing at Congress. After he collected himself, he provided a condescending and irrelevant lecture on the requirement that the Department of Justice sign documents that accuse people of wrongdoing. Moving on to yet another non-sequitur, Rosenstein then explained that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application is a request for a warrant that requires a supporting affidavit signed by a career law enforcement officer.
Rosenstein then mocked Congress, saying he doesn’t have anything to say about drafts of impeachment articles that "nobody has the courage to put their name on and that they leak in that way." He then said "There have been people making threats against me privately and publicly for quite some time, and I think they should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted. We are going to do what’s required by the rule of law and any kind of threats that anyone makes are not going to affect the way we do our job."