WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is defending his decision to appoint a special counsel to scrutinize ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, telling senators Wednesday that he thought it was the best way to complete the investigation appropriately and ensure public confidence in its conclusions.
Rosenstein was appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the first in a series of oversight hearings that coincide with accelerated election-year efforts to review the FBI’s Russia investigation.
Though Rosenstein was a Trump appointee, he has often been regarded with suspicion by many supporters of the president, and Trump himself, for his role in the Russia investigation.
In his opening statement to the committee, Rosenstein planned to say that “as a result of events that followed the departure of the FBI director, I was concerned that the public would not have confidence in the investigation and that the acting FBI director was not the right person to lead it.”
Allies of the president in the last year have moved aggressively to rewrite the narrative of the investigation, particularly after a Justice Department inspector general report from last December identified significant errors and omissions in FBI applications to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide.
