What is Rosenstein up to now? And where is AG Sessions??

In an unusual request, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked federal prosecutors to help review documents of President Trump's SCOTUS nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

Rosenstein's email subject line sent to 93 US Attorneys read,

"Personal Message to U.S. Attorneys From the Deputy A.G.," and included the sentence, "We need your help in connection with President Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court."

The New York Times reported:

Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, has asked federal prosecutors to help review the government documents of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times on Wednesday.

Mr. Rosenstein's request was an unusual insertion of politics into federal law enforcement. While the Justice Department has helped work on previous Supreme Court nominations, department lawyers in Washington typically carry out that task, not prosecutors who pursue criminal investigations nationwide.

But in an email sent this week to the nation's 93 United States attorneys, Mr. Rosenstein asked each office to provide up to three federal prosecutors "who can make this important project a priority for the next several weeks." Names were to be submitted to Mr. Rosenstein's office by the end of Wednesday.

Mr. Rosenstein's email, which had the subject line "Personal Message to U.S. Attorneys From the Deputy A.G.," included the sentence, "We need your help in connection with President Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court."

No matter how well his meeting with Vladimir Putin goes - and even if he was gifted the entire city of Moscow - the media and Democrats will say it's not good enough, Trump tweeted before the one-on-one session.

The US president wrote on Sunday evening that he was on his way to Helsinki, and that he was "looking forward to meeting with President Putin tomorrow." He went on to state that he knows what the response will be from the mainstream media and the left.



Trump's comment does indeed come amid speculation from politicians on both sides of the aisle - and the Atlantic - ahead of the meeting, as well as amid a frantic mainstream media landscape.

Donald Trump said he does not know Vladimir Putin well enough to definitively call him "ruthless," but hopes the he and his Russian "competitor" will get along well when they meet on Monday in Finland.

"Right now, I say we're competitors but, for the United States and, frankly, the UK and other places, to get along with Russia and China and all of these other places.... that's a good thing, that's not a bad thing. That's a really good thing," the president said, in an interview with The Mail on Sunday.

After touching upon North Korea's Kim Jong-un and "plenty" of other "ruthless people" Trump has to deal with in his capacity, Piers Morgan bluntly asked if the US president considers the Russian leader to be "one of those."

"I can't tell you that, I assume he probably is...," Trump said, avoiding harsh rhetoric. "I don't know him [President Putin]. I met him a couple of times, I met him at the G20."

"If we can get along with Russia that's a good thing,"the US president once again stressed, noting that the two leaders will "probably get along very well."

This is not the first time that Trump referred to the Kremlin as a "competitor," despite Moscow's reassurances that Russia views the US as a "partner."

At least seven people associated with longtime Trump friend Roger Stone have been contacted by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to interviews with witnesses and others who say they've been contacted.

The contacts suggest Mueller appears to still be aggressively pursuing evidence that would tell him whether associates of president Trump colluded with Russia.

Mueller's team appears increasingly focused on whether any associates of Trump knew that the Russian government had hacked emails from the DNC and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta and provided them to Wikileaks during the last presidential election, according to those sources.

A self-described "dirty trickster" in American politics, Stone has taken credit for persuading President Trump to get into politics. He initially served as an adviser to Trump's 2016 campaign but left amid controversy in 2015. While Trump told the Washington Post at the time that he "terminated Roger Stone...because he no longer serves a useful function for my campaign," Stone told a different story, explaining on Twitter their falling out was about political messaging.

Stone has been under scrutiny in part because of statements in August of 2016 which political opponents allege suggested he knew that Wikileaks was going to leak damaging information on Clinton before it was released. Stone has been targeted because he communicated with Guccifer, the hacker the U.S. intelligence community believes broke into DNC computers, sources told ABC News.

Donald Trump has confirmed that he is planning to run for president in 2020, not only because "everybody wants him to," but also because there doesn't seem to be any viable competition in the liberal Democratic camp.

"They do not have the right candidate," Trump told Piers Morgan in an interview for the Mail on Sunday, when asked if the "liberals could be facing not two more years of you but potentially six."

Trump boldly reiterated that, at the moment, he could not name a single Democrat who could potentially beat him. "I don't see anybody. I know them all and I don't see anybody," the US President said on board Air Force One, which he reportedly plans to re-decorate with "more American" colors and fit with bigger beds.

The German foreign minister has joined a number of anxious Western politicians in offering advice to Donald Trump ahead of the US president's summit with Vladimir Putin, warning him against making "unilateral deals" with Russia.

"Unilateral deals at the expense of allies will harm the United States, too. The one who hits his partners risks losing eventually," Heiko Maas told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag in an interview released on Sunday.

However, the German foreign minister did acknowledge that the high-level talks between the US and Russia is a good sign, adding that the meeting can be "a step forward towards" nuclear disarmament.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and others embarrassed by DOJ's actions are shielded by the never-ending nature of the investigation.

How long will the investigation into the 2016 cyber intrusion into the Democratic National Committee servers remain open and ongoing? Perhaps forever. Because that's how long the Department of Justice needs to thwart Congressional oversight of the embarrassing details of the dubious origins of the investigation. See the way DOJ cited the "ongoing" nature of the investigation to block Congressional Oversight here, here, here, and here to name just a few examples.

When Congress has successfully pried information from DOJ, it has discovered DOJ sometimes redacted or withheld information to shield DOJ from embarrassment - not to protect the integrity of any investigation. For example: here, here, and here. So long as the Russia investigation remains "ongoing and open," DOJ remains shielded from publicly answering questions such as, "What was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's role in the Comey firing?" or "Did Rosenstein improperly authorize defective requests for surveillance of Trump associate Carter Page?"

His first public performance shows him to be a partisan weasel of the first order.

The Peter Strzok hearing was a travesty, starting with the fact that he testified as a cocooned, lawyered-up government employee still working for the FBI. It is outrageous that he hasn't been fired yet. He even still has a security clearance! That alone is proof of the deep state's hold on certain executive branch agencies. If the FBI keeps its so-so employees close, it keeps its worst employees even closer. That Strzok could huddle with FBI lawyers while stonewalling a Republican-led committee speaks to the corruption of official Washington and the comparative impotence of Republican administrations. Does anybody think an FBI agent who had vowed to "stop" the candidacy of Barack Obama would have lasted a week at his job, let alone over a year, after the discovery of his bias?

US politicians have joined their European counterparts in voicing warnings to Donald Trump ahead of his meeting with the Russian leader in Helsinki. The Democrats urged him not to meet alone with "trained KGB vet" Vladimir Putin.

"If you insist on meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday, we write to urge that you include senior members of your team and not meet one-on-one with Mr Putin, as reportedly planned," a group of eight senators wrote.

The politicians characterize the Russian leader as "a trained KGB veteran" who will come to the Helsinki meeting "well-prepared." They didn't miss the chance to remind Trump of a statement by the Kremlin, saying that the one-on-one meeting "absolutely suits" Putin. "There must be other Americans in the room," the letter asserts.

President Trump in an early morning tweet Thursday nudged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to act over FBI lawyer Lisa Page's refusal to comply with subpoena and testify before Congress.

"As I head out to a very important NATO meeting, I see that FBI Lover/Agent Lisa Page is dodging a Subpoena & is refusing to show up and testify," Trump tweeted early Thursday morning.

He continued, "What can she possibly say about her statements and lies. So much corruption on the other side. Where is the Attorney General?"