Deputy AG Rosenstein Denies Reports of a "Fishing Expedition" by Special Counsel Mueller in Russia Probe

Deputy Attorney General-designate, federal prosecutor Rod Rosenstein, listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 7, 2017, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It’s not a fishing expedition.

That’s the word of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was making his first appearance on Sunday morning news talk television.

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While discussing special counsel Robert Mueller, the Russia probe, and concerns that he was extending the investigation beyond the matters of collusion and obstruction:

“The special counsel is subject to the rules and regulations of the Department of Justice, and we don’t engage in fishing expeditions,” Mr. Rosenstein said on “Fox News Sunday.”

He went on to stress that Mueller understands the specific scope of the investigation.

People have been shrieking, ever since news began to circulate that Mueller was looking into Trump’s family financials.

Mr. Rosenstein played down the reports: “That’s not anything that I’ve said. That’s not anything Director Mueller has said. We don’t know who’s saying it or how credible those sources are.”

So maybe that part isn’t true?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vouched for the character of Robert Mueller, calling him a “good man” and saying that while there was a tendency for investigators in these cases to feel an obligation to produce something, his experiences with Mueller, when he was a U.S. attorney and Mueller was the director of the FBI was a positive one, and he trusts him not to take the investigation to places it’s not meant to go.

Mr. Christie added: “There’s always a temptation to do that. I hope that that’s not what he does. I hope the focus remains on what may have motivated any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, if, in fact, any collusion happened at all.”

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And while loyalists are losing it over news of a grand jury, Governor Christie pointed out that calling a grand jury was a “normal step taken by a careful prosecutor.”

“That’s a typical thing to be done in any investigation,” Mr. Christie said. “I did literally thousands of these as U.S. attorney in seven years in New Jersey. And so I thought that the coverage about how monumental this was is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the way this process works.”

There’s a lot of misunderstanding going on, in regards to the flow of a special counsel investigation, apparently.

Rosenstein went on to say that should Mueller find something during his investigation that would require he expand the scope beyond the original specifications, he would have to seek permission to go any further.

“But we don’t talk about that publicly,” he added.

There seems to be a real effort to calm people down, and that’s just what needs to happen.

Relax, let the investigation run its course, and if there was no collusion and no obstruction, then there’s nothing to worry about.

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