After months of rumor and speculation, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein officially resigned from his position in the Trump administration’s Department of Justice, effective May 11.
In a clear display of his serious attitude toward the job, Attorney General William Barr wasted no time in announcing that Ed O’Callaghan will temporarily fill Rosenstein’s position until the permanent replacement can be confirmed by the Senate.
Rosenstein’s top deputy
Barr announced in a statement on Friday that O’Callaghan would serve as the acting deputy attorney general for the time being.
O’Callaghan, who was Rosenstein’s principal deputy, will move up to fill his former boss’s role until the nominee, Jeffrey Rosen, completes the confirmation process.
It is unclear at this time how long O’Callaghan will serve in that interim role as it is also unclear how long the confirmation process for Rosen will take.
Barr issues high praise for O’Callaghan
Barr said of his new second-in-command at the Justice Department, “Ed is a top-notch attorney whose intellect, competence, judgment, and experience are evident in every task he takes on.”
“That is why I have asked him to serve as the Acting Deputy Attorney General until the Senate confirms Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein’s successor, Jeffrey Rosen,” Barr said.
“I am confident that Ed will be an excellent Acting Deputy Attorney General during this interim period,” he added.
Controversial tenure for Rosenstein
Rosenstein had a rather tumultuous tenure as deputy attorney general and received mixed opinions from the public and the media about how he handled the job.
He faced criticism for his oversight, or lack thereof, of the Mueller special counsel probe as well as his alleged involvement in what increasingly appears to have been a coup attempt against President Trump. He was also criticized for his reluctance to cooperate with congressional inquiries into DOJ business — which admittedly involves classified information and ongoing investigations and litigation that can’t be publicly discussed.
Rosenstein is known to have signed off on at least one extension of the dubious FISA warrant request to spy on an associate of the Trump campaign in
implicated in a plot to wear a wire when meeting with the president … though that allegation came from the decidedly untrustworthy Andrew McCabe, who was fired as deputy director of the FBI for leaking and lying.