page_title: Rod Rosenstein
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Rod Rosenstein / Career / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Independent-Counsel-Office-Group (circa 1990s). Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Alex Azar, and Rod Rosenstein are featured. Part of a WhiteHouse.gov slide show, "A Remarkable Career in Photos: Judge Kavanaugh to Testify Before the Senate"
context_page_description: Rod Jay Rosenstein is an American attorney who served as the 37th United States Deputy Attorney General from April 2017 until May 2019. Prior to his appointment, he served as a United States Attorney for the District of Maryland. At the time of his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General in April 2017, he was the nation's longest-serving U.S. Attorney. Rosenstein had also been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2007, but his nomination was never considered by the U.S. Senate.
  President Donald Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice on February 1, 2017. Rosenstein was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 2017. In May 2017, he authored a memo that President Trump cited as the basis for his decision to dismiss FBI Director James Comey.
  Following the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Comey's dismissal, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 elections and related matters.
context_section_description: After his clerkship, Rosenstein joined the United States Department of Justice through the Attorney General's Honors Program. From 1990 to 1993, he prosecuted public corruption cases as a trial attorney with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, the latter of which was led by then Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller.
  During the Clinton Administration, Rosenstein served as Counsel to Deputy Attorney General Philip B. Heymann (1993–1994) and Special Assistant to Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Jo Ann Harris (1994–1995). Rosenstein then worked in the United States Office of the Independent Counsel under Ken Starr on the Whitewater investigation into President Bill Clinton. As an Associate Independent Counsel from 1995 to 1997, he was co-counsel in the trial of three defendants who were convicted of fraud, and he supervised the investigation that found no basis for criminal prosecution of White House officials who had obtained FBI background reports.
  United States Attorney Lynne A. Battaglia hired Rosenstein as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland in 1997.
  From 2001 to 2005, Rosenstein served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice. He coordinated the tax enforcement activities of the Tax Division, the U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the IRS, and he supervised 90 attorneys and 30 support employees. He oversaw civil litigation and served as the acting head of the Tax Division when Assistant Attorney General Eileen J. O'Connor was unavailable, and he personally briefed and argued civil appeals in several federal appellate courts.
caption: Rosenstein during his time working for the Independent Counsel. Brett Kavanaugh, Alex Azar, and Ken Starr are present.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4135", "Image ImageLength": "2970", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:06:21 10:16:59", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "394", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6806", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4135", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2970"}