From Julian Sanchez:
For the No. 3 lawyer at the Department of Justice to quit after just nine months on the job is, to say the least, unusual. Under the Trump administration, where the downright bizarre is so commonplace that the merely unusual barely registers, this is nevertheless an aberration worth marking, because it says a lot about the state of a Justice Department locked in a surreal conflict with its own president and his party, none of it good.
When United States Associate Attorney General Rachel L. Brand last week announced she’d be stepping down to take a job as a vice president at Wal-Mart, it made headlines primarily because it also meant passing on her role as heir apparent to embattled Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Tasked with supervising Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal, Rosenstein has become an improbable target of invective from the very president who appointed him, from Republican legislators, and even from Political Action Committees. It seems clear that Trump is laying groundwork for his eventual removal, in hopes that Rosenstein’s successor—meaning, until her departure, Brand—might be more willing to carry out an order to fire Mueller. But her departure should be seen as a warning sign with implications not only for the Mueller inquiry, but the future of the Trump Justice Department as a whole. To see why, it’s helpful to appreciate two things about Rachel Brand.