Rosenstein predicts Barr’s critics may one day realize his obstruction decision was ‘reasonable’ – Washington Examiner

Rod Rosenstein predicts Attorney General William Barr’s detractors who criticize him for his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation may come around one day.

No stranger to controversy himself, the former deputy attorney general stressed to the New York Times that Barr made the right call when he determined there was insufficient evidence to initiate criminal prosecution against President Trump for obstruction of justice.

“A few years from now, after all of this is resolved, some of Barr’s critics might conclude that his approach was a reasonable way to navigate through a difficult situation,” he said.

A redacted version of the report Mueller’s report laid out 10 instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, but Mueller declined to make a determination on the matter, citing a Justice Department guideline that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Mueller also did not find sufficient evidence to establish criminal conspiracy took place between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Before the report’s release in April, Barr released a summary of its principal conclusions which said he and Rosenstein decided there was not sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction crime had occurred. Still, although Trump says he has been vindicated, Democrats argue Mueller’s refusal to clear Trump on obstruction provides them a road map to continue to investigate and possibly seek impeachment.

In a CBS News interview last month, Barr contradicted the reasoning Mueller gave about why he did not make a determination on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. “I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision,” Barr said, adding that the special counsel “had his reasons for not doing it” but declined to explain. “I’m not going to, you know, argue about those reasons,” he said.

Rosenstein was the official who appointed Mueller to be special counsel in May 2017, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump heavily criticized Rosenstein and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions because of the Russia investigation, which he called a “witch hunt.”

But by the time Rosenstein left the Justice Department last month, he appeared to patch things up with the president and has been a vocal defender of Barr, who has become a target of Democrats amid a fight over access to materials and people related to the Mueller investigation.

Barr is now looking into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign, which began in the summer of 2016 and was wrapped into Mueller’s inquiry, due to misconduct concerns by Justice Department and FBI officials, including Comey, and has tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham with leading a review.

“He dives right into things,” Rosenstein said. “He doesn’t act like somebody who just arrived recently. He acts like someone who has been here all along for 30 years.”

Barr previously served a stint as attorney general in the early 1990s under former President George H.W. Bush.