House Republicans’ attempt to impeach Deputy AG Rosenstein just collapsed in humiliating fashion

House Republicans were forced to run with their tails between their legs today after leadership shut down the Freedom Caucus’ aggressive attempt to derail the Mueller probe by impeaching deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Yesterday, Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and right hand Jim Jordan (R-OH) filed a resolution to strip Rosenstein of his position and accused him of having “repeatedly obstructed oversight” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s independent probe into interference by the Russian Federation in the 2016 election and the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with foreign agents to tilt the election in his favor.

Meadows and the rest of his coven of nihilistic extremists are furious with Rosenstein for refusing to give them access to important Mueller probe documents and for redacting too much from the documents he does give them.

Rosenstein likely suspects the House GOP only wants these documents so they can immediately leak them the right-wing spin machine and weaponize them in order to discredit or otherwise compromise Mueller’s investigation, as they’ve shamelessly done in the past.

But House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) quickly put a stop to their rebellion, arguing that it was “not the right way to go.” He praised the “tremendous progress” that the House had made in working towards “full compliance” from the Department of Justice before revealing his real motive behind the rejection: his concern that it would interfere in the confirmation of Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

That forced Meadows and company to back down. They tabled the resolution this morning but warned that this was the Department of Justice’s “one last chance” to comply.  “I hope we can avoid impeachment and hopefully avoid contempt and get the documents, but certainly both those things are on the table and remain on the table to have more of a contempt process. Both options remain there,” said Meadows in a statement. 

Meadows and his allies are growing bolder by the day, and it’s clear that they will stop at nothing to keep Robert Mueller from bringing the president to justice and letting the American people know what really happened during the 2016 election — and we can’t allow them to succeed.

Natalie Dickinson

Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Press. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been freelance blogging and writing for progressive outlets ever since.