Rod Rosenstein Protecting the U.S. Constitution: Separation of Powers

Yesterday, Rachel Maddow had a piece on Rod Rosenstein's stand against those in Congress and elsewhere who are challenging the Justice Department's refusal to release details of its investigation concerning the Trump administration. Rod Rosenstein is the Deputy Attorney General in charge of overseeing the Mueller investigation. He took on that responsibility when Attorney General Sessions withdrew himself due to potential conflicts of interest.

The issue at hand is whether the traditionally secret investigation of criminal conduct can be made public. The law in this area is clear and protects the secrecy of criminal investigations. There are some in Congress who want the information for the sole purpose of passing it on to the Trump administration. The separation of powers doctrine protects one branch of government from interfering in the processes of one of the other two. The branches of government are the executive, legislative and judiciary. This rule of law protects an attorney general, a part of the executive branch, from being interfered with by the legislative branch- and so on.

In addition to Congress trying to pry into the ongoing investigation, President Trump is also, understandably, keen on getting whatever information he can from the investigation. Here, the separation of powers principle does not apply as technically the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch. Nevertheless, the rule of law in this area basically walls off the Justice Department from the White House to keep the secrecy of the Justice Department's investigation in tact, even from the President.

Rachel Maddow's piece made clear how Rosenstein is an informed and principled protector of the U.S. Constitution and the laws asserting the importance of the independence of an investigation of the Justice Department. While these ideas are not new or novel; it was reassuring to see that in times such as these there seem to be always these otherwise unremarkable Americans who rise up, at great personal cost, to protect the rights we all hold dear from those who would destroy them.