The White House announced President Donald Trump has nominated Jeffrey Rosen to replace Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general.
Rosenstein announced that he was leaving the Department of Justice next month on Monday following the airing of an explosive interview Sunday night of former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
McCabe told CBS News’s Scott Pelley that Rosenstein suggested removing President Donald J. Trump (R) from office using the Twenty-fifth amendment claiming that the President was mentally unfit to serve after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
Trump Victory Chair Perry O. Hooper Jr. told the Alabama Political Reporter that Rosen was a good pick to replace Rosenstein.
“Jeffrey Rosen is a seasoned professional with not only an outstanding legal mind; but with the necessary management experience for this key position in the Trump administration,” Hooper told APR. “He will make an outstanding addition to William Barr’s team. He will assist the attorney general in getting the politics out of the Department of Justice and bringing the Mueller investigation to a timely conclusion.”
Hooper is a former state Representative and is a member of the Alabama Republican Executive Committee.
Hooper, on Monday, called for a thorough investigation of the Department of Justice following Sunday’s revelations.
“I call on all Republican Senators to join Senator Lindsey Graham in his pledge to do everything possible to get to the bottom of the Department of Justice and FBI’s behavior toward President Trump and his campaign,” Hooper said.
Rosen is currently the Deputy Secretary of Transportation. He worked previously at Kirkland & Ellis, the firm where Attorney General William Barr also worked. Barr was only confirmed last week.
Trump appointed Rosenstein as Deputy Attorney General and Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. McCabe was a career FBI agent.
Following the 2016 election, allegations surfaced that the Trump presidential campaign may have colluded with members of Russian Intelligence and Wikileaks to expose Hillary Clinton’s emails in order for Trump to win the 2016 election. The President denies the allegations.
Following revelations that Sessions had not disclosed two meetings that he had had with the Russian Ambassador during his confirmation hearings; Sessions recused himself from the Russian collusion investigation. That meant that his duties in the matter fell on Rosenstein, who acted as an acting AG for the matter. Trump fired James Comey, elevating McCabe to acting FBI Director. After his first meeting with the President, McCabe ordered two FBI investigations of the President. Rosenstein then met with McCabe, and McCabe claims that the two had discussions about removing the President.
Republicans are saying that those discussions may have been an attempted coup.
“It appears that there is a distinct possibility that Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein actually tried to lead a coup to remove the President from office from within the Department of Justice by invoking the 25th Amendment,” Hooper told APR. “In this interview McCabe said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raised the issue shortly after the firing of FBI Director James Comey in 2017. I find this shocking almost beyond belief.”
Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate the Russian collusion allegations. Sessions would eventually fire McCabe. In November, Sessions was forced to resign. There is speculation that Barr may close the Mueller investigation after Mueller releases his pending report.
(Original reporting by CBS News and the Washington Post contributed to this report.)
