Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told Fox News in an interview that will air Wednesday that the Justice Department will act if special counsel Robert Mueller acts improperly.
Mueller, a registered Republican, has hired at least seven Democratic donors to work on his legal team as he investigates Russian election interference and possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. One of these attorneys, James Quarles, has donated $34,000 to Democrats.
President Trump previously told Fox News, “I can say that the people that have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters. Some of them worked for Hillary Clinton. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous, if you want to know the truth, from that standpoint.” (RELATED: They Don’t Like Him, But Key Trump Allies Think Mueller Should Keep His Job)
Fox News’s Martha MacCallum asked Rosenstein whether these hirings bother him and the deputy attorney general said that the Department of Justice judges “by results and so my view about that is, we’ll see if they do the right thing.”
In that same June interview, Trump said that Mueller is “very, very good friends with Comey, which is very bothersome.”
Rosenstein was asked by MacCallum about Mueller’s friendship with former FBI director James Comey and whether this gives him “any pause.
“I’ve got to explain that I made the decision to appoint Director Mueller based upon his reputation. He had an excellent reputation. Really bipartisan support for his integrity. That’s why I made that decision,” Rosenstein said. “But, I can assure you that if there were conflicts that arose, because of Director Mueller or anybody employed by Director Mueller, we have a process within the department to take care of that.”