Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has tendered his resignation effective May 11. For someone like Donald Trump, who rants and raves like a lunatic about the nefarious “Deep State” he says is out to get him, Rosenstein has been and will remain a committed enforcer of the deep state. Perhaps, not the deep state in the traditional sense. Rosenstein’s and Attorney General William Barr’s deep state is one of corporate manipulators that, today, finds itself entrenched firmly in the power centers of the United States, Russia, Britain, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, and most of the world’s other major governments sans China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Rosenstein drafted and signed the letter that fired James Comey as FBI director. Rosenstein joined Barr in pressuring Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller to prematurely wrap up his investigation of foreign meddling in the 2016 election. Rosenstein never raised one peep when Trump appointed sacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions' chief of staff Matt Whitaker as acting Attorney General, a position for which Whitaker was totally unsuited.

Throughout his career, Rosenstein has been an untrustworthy, slimy, worm. While attending Harvard Law School in the late 1980s, Rosenstein interned for the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, who happened to be the same man he failed to step up for thirty years later, Robert Mueller. From 1990 to 1993, Rosenstein served as a Justice Department trial attorney in the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division. Rosenstein’s boss was, for a second time, Robert Mueller.

Rosenstein’s time in the Public Integrity Section was during Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh’s investigation of the Reagan and Bush administrations for the Iran-Contra scandal. There was plenty of public corruption in those days, but Rosenstein would witness Attorney General Barr okay pardons for six cronies of George H W Bush. The six had been convicted as a result of Walsh’s investigation. Mueller’s exasperation over Barr’s non-cooperation with Walsh’s investigation appeared in William Safire’s column in The New York Times. Safire called Barr “Captain Cover-up.”

From 1995 to 1997, Rosenstein worked in the Office of Independent Counsel Ken Starr as a co-counsel in what amounted to an actual witch hunt by Republicans of President Bill Clinton. In 1996, Rosenstein, Starr, and other prosecutors gathered at a North Little Rock, Arkansas restaurant to celebrate three convictions of individuals – James and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Democratic Governor Jim Guy Tucker, all friends of Bill Clinton -- who were found guilty in the so-called “Whitewater” investigation led by Starr. Rosenstein joined the other prosecutors in lighting up their “victory cigars.”

In 1997, Rosenstein was rewarded with the job of Assistant U.S. Attorney in Maryland. In 2005, a victorious George W. Bush took the occasion of his re-election to follow Karl Rove’s advice and fire several U.S. Attorneys around the country. Replacing the fired U.S. Attorney in Maryland was Rosenstein, who had been serving since 2001 as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division at Main Justice.

Rosenstein quickly became one of Vice President Dick Cheney’s deep state enforcers. In Maryland exists the state’s largest employer, the National Security Agency. Cheney vowed to make examples of several NSA analysts who refused to go along with Cheney’s orders to manipulate intelligence to prove Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. NSA analysts also knew that Cheney and other Bush administration officials had not told the truth about the facts, as known to NSA and its allied agencies abroad, regarding the 9/11 attacks. Rosenstein, showing his true weasel characteristics, engaged in retaliation against NSA employees using false testimony, planted evidence, and Kafkaesque trial tactics in order to please Cheney and those in his circle of doctrinaire neo-conservatives, including Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, David Addington, Abram Shulsky, and Richard Perle.

Rosenstein ensured that no individual in the U.S. District for the State of Maryland received a fair trial if they were targeted by the district's chief employer, NSA. While this editor covered the trial of one falsely accused NSA analyst in Greenbelt, there was an attempt by Rosenstein’s Assistant U.S. Attorney and Rosenstein’s hand-picked trial judge to call this editor to the witness stand to be ordered to divulge my sources on a story implicating Cheney in bringing about the prosecution of the defendant. Fortunately, a faulty automobile kept me from covering the trial on that particular day. Had that not been the case, I would have been looking at jail for refusing to take the stand and, therefore, would have been subject to a contempt of court charge, all courtesy of Rosenstein's political retribution operation, masked as a U.S. Attorney's Office, in Baltimore.

Rosenstein was further perturbed when WMR reported: “A triumvirate has emerged that suggests illegal collusion to prosecute NSA whistleblowers that includes U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein, his assistant David Salem, and US Judge Peter Messitte, who, according to U.S. intelligence sources, carries, in addition to his U.S. passport, a passport issued by Portugal.”

On May 10, 2005, WMR reported on the existence of a highly-classified database at NSA, which was formerly code-named "FIRSTFRUITS." The database monitored journalists who reported on the activities of the eavesdropping agency, as well as other intelligence matters. We later reported at the time that, according to an executive-level source at NSA, confirmed by a related source within NSA's "Q" Directorate -- the Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence -- this editor was the subject of a national security investigation beginning in June 2005 that remained ongoing as of 2008.

In 2005, Bush nominated Rosenstein for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Rosenstein’s nomination was blocked by Maryland’s two Democratic Senators, Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin. Rosenstein would never forgive the Democrats for costing him a valuable lifetime appointment to the federal bench. However, for reasons that continue to baffle Maryland political observers, President Barack Obama retained Rosenstein as U.S. Attorney for Maryland. When Trump was elected, Rosenstein was nominated to be the Deputy Attorney General working under Jeff Sessions. Trump would derisively call the Sessions-Rosenstein team “Mr. Magoo” and “Mr. Peepers,” respectively.

When Trump appointed Barr to be his “Roy Cohn” at Justice, it was old home week for Rosenstein. Once again, the man who sat in the office of the Attorney General was the same person Rosenstein had assisted thirty years earlier in the cover-up of the Iran-Contra scandal. Rosenstein would use his remaining time at Justice to appear behind Barr at a news conference at which Barr incorrectly described Mueller’s final report on election manipulation as a total exoneration. Rosenstein also praised Barr in public remarks delivered to the Yale Club in New York. In full weasel mode, Rosenstein also lauded Trump for his “respect for the rule of law” and berated the Obama administration and the press.

Rosenstein is leaving as number two man at Justice kissing Trump’s ass all the way out the door. Knowing Rosenstein and the wriggly worm that he is, Mr. Peepers is obviously still holding out for one of those lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary. The only question that remains is whether Rosenstein’s lips remained in contact with Trump’s ass long enough to seal the deal on a future federal judicial nomination.

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