Friday’s news that the Justice Department’s top political leaders will be vacating their posts in the coming days set off a cascade of questions about the future of the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Until recently, many of the department’s senior-most positions were unfilled. But in recent weeks and months, Attorney General Jeff Sessions helped to fill dozens of vacancies and elevate a handful of prosecutors and appointees to key leadership roles.
The shake-up followed outrage from Republicans over special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation and increasing concern from within the department as the Senate considers whether to confirm William P. Barr, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and whether to demand that the acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller probe.
Mueller, a former FBI director, was appointed in May 2017. The investigation and the forthcoming report from Mueller’s team on the Russia investigation and potential obstruction of justice by the president have proven to be an existential crisis for the Trump administration for the last two years. In recent months, the fervor among Trump’s base to bring the probe to an end has grown.
Here’s someone who can explain what’s in store for Mueller’s investigation now that Barr has taken over as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment following Thursday’s news.
A top aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and one of just a handful of Department of Justice attorneys to be appointed by the Trump administration, will depart the department for the private sector.
Joe Weg could exit in the coming days to lead an New York-based international corruption investigation team at Steptoe & Johnson, the firm announced Friday. Weg currently serves as the associate attorney general, the No. 3 job in the department, directly overseeing hundreds of career prosecutors.
He had been predicted to leave shortly before the high-profile resignation Thursday of Sessions.
Weg’s departure is part of a leadership exodus engulfing the department after Sessions’ ouster by Trump.
“I’ve confirmed with Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker that both Rod Rosenstein and I will be departing the Justice Department … This will be an orderly process and I will remain in my role until a confirmation process for my successor is complete,” Rosenstein said in his resignation letter.
Rosenstein’s departure date was not given, but his exit is set to be on the near horizon, according to a person familiar with the situation. The only confirmation so far is that Whitaker is expediting the process to find Rosenstein’s replacement, said this person and other Justice Department insiders, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Trump has said he will move quickly to replace Rosenstein with a new permanent deputy attorney general, and sources say there is no end in sight for an investigation in the special counsel’s office into the role people in Trump’s orbit have played in Russia’s election interference.
Across the nation’s top national security law enforcement agencies, appointments made by the Trump administration have proven most tumultuous, as the pace of departures from the Trump White House due to controversy surrounding the Russian investigation and its congressional fallout continued.
Last month, more than 30 former senior national security officials signed an open letter warning that the president’s intended nominee to fill the number two spot at the Department of Homeland Security, Ronald Vitiello, would upend DHS’s mission. The William & Mary Law School graduate and former acting deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been leading ICE since 2017.
On Friday, however, Sessions, who resigned in disgrace, praised Vitiello’s candidacy shortly before Sessions himself left the department in an official tweet.
“Ron Vitiello, a strong law enforcement leader who has received bipartisan praise for his service, would bring great credit to DHS,” Sessions said on Twitter.
Vitiello backed out of consideration for the position on Friday.
Tags Rod Rosenstein Trump resignations Mueller Russia Sessions
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