Story highlights
- Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein will do before a House panel
- He retains oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation
(CNN)The second-highest ranking official at the Justice Department, will step back into the national spotlight Wednesday with a chance to defend the department as a growing chorus of Republicans raise questions over political influence at the agency.
What might normally have been a routine oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, will undoubtedly now take on a new focus in light of the roughly 375 politically-charged text messages exchanged between two top FBI employees that were turned over to congressional investigators late Tuesday evening.
Wednesday's hearing also gives lawmakers an opportunity to grill Rosenstein publicly on his views of everything from President Donald Trump's cable news-fueled rages about the Justice Department's handling of various investigations to Rosenstein's oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Rosenstein -- who retains oversight of Mueller's investigation since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from all 2016 campaign-related probes -- has managed to keep a low profile since his front and center role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey back in May.
And while Rosenstein received something of a cheat-sheet of anticipated questions from House members' daylong interrogation of FBI Director Christopher Wray last week, answers to fresh calls for a second special counsel to investigate the Justice Department will fall to Rosenstein on Wednesday.
The specific demand for another special counsel by Jay Sekulow, a member of the President's legal team, comes amid reports from Fox News that one of Rosenstein's deputies, Bruce Ohr, was stripped of his associate attorney general post last week over meetings in 2016 with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele -- the former British intelligence officer who assembled the Trump dossier. GOP lawmakers are expected to interrogate Rosenstein on Wednesday not only about the circumstances of Ohr's meetings with Simpson and Steele, but also reports that Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.
Lawmakers are also likely to continue to probe deeper into revelations that Peter Strzok, one of the FBI's top counterintelligence experts, and FBI lawyer Lisa Page exchanged a running commentary of criticism of then-presidential candidate Trump via text message for months. Stzrok was immediately removed from Mueller's team this past summer after the text messages were uncovered through an internal investigation at the Justice Department.
"I am very troubled by the recent controversy surrounding staff assigned to the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in last year's presidential election," said Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, in a statement. "Another prosecutor, who remains on the special counsel's team, has expressed views opposing President Trump's agenda," an apparent reference to Andrew Weissmann, who lauded former acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend Trump's original ban on travel to the US from several Muslim majority countries.
Rosenstein told NBC's DC affiliate last week that he was satisfied with the direction of Mueller's investigation, but Democratic lawmakers are expected to press Rosenstein to show that members of the special counsel's team have been complying with Justice Department policies.
A committee aide added that Democrats were planning on using much of their questioning to paint the Republican attacks on the Russia probe as "conspiracy theories."