Jeffrey Rosen speaks during a Senate Transportation, Science and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C. on March 29, 2017. President Donald Trump plans to nominate Jeffrey Rosen as the next deputy U.S. attorney general, the White House said on Tuesday night, the latest shuffle in the Justice Department at a time when it faces close scrutiny over its Russia investigation. Rosen, currently deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, would succeed Rod Rosenstein, who appointed a special counsel to investigate possible ties between Russia and Trump's campaign. Rosenstein is expected to step down by mid-March, a Justice Department official said on Monday. Attorney General William Barr welcomed the choice of Rosen, saying in a statement that he had 35 years of experience at the highest levels of government and in the private sector. "His years of outstanding legal and management experience make him an excellent choice to succeed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has served the Department of Justice over many years with dedication and distinction," Barr said. Rosen's nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He previously served as general counsel in the Transportation Department and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) but does not have experience as a prosecutor or Justice Department official, which is unusual for a deputy attorney general candidate. The Justice Department oversees the nation's law enforcement and various federal investigations, including the U.S. Special Counsel's Office probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion by Trump's presidential campaign. Rosenstein gained national attention after Trump's former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation, leaving his then second-in-command to oversee U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team. Trump, who repeatedly criticized Sessions over the probe that he calls a "witch hunt," ousted Sessions in November. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Tuesday that it was possible Trump was a Russian asset. "I think it's possible. I think that's why we started our investigation, and I'm really anxious to see where director Mueller concludes that," he said. Trump has repeatedly dismissed accusations hurled at him by McCabe, who told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that Rosenstein had discussed invoking the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in the months after Trump took power. Rosenstein, who stopped overseeing Mueller's probe on Nov. 7 when Trump named Matt Whittaker acting attorney general, had been expected to leave soon after Barr assumed office. The U.S. Senate confirmed Barr last week.<doc-sep>Rod Rosenstein is likely leaving the Justice Department next month. After a turbulent two years for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, caught in the middle of President Donald Trump’s ire over special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia-related investigation, who is the man Trump is nominating to replace Rosenstein? His name is Jeff Rosen, and he’s already the No. 2 at another federal agency, the Transportation Department. He and newly-installed Attorney General William Barr worked together years ago at the powerhouse law firm Kirkland & Ellis. According to Rosen’s official biography, he worked at the firm for nearly 30 years, before and after two stints in government. Under the George W. Bush administration, Rosen first served as a top lawyer in the Transportation Department, and then as general counsel and senior policy adviser at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Afterward, he returned to private practice. He rejoined the federal government shortly after Trump took office, and as deputy secretary at the Transportation Department “he acts as the Department’s Chief Operating Officer and advises and assists the Secretary in leading the Department's Operating Administrations and more than 50,000 employees,” his official biography states. The deputy attorney general is also “similar to a chief operating officer,” Rosenstein said after assuming the position in 2017. Both roles also focus on one basic mission: public safety. During his Senate confirmation hearing to join the Transportation Department in 2017, Rosen said government agencies should “implement the law” as Congress has written it. “I have a somewhat simple view, that if Congress has written the law then the [government] agencies should implement the law,” Rosen said. Rosen graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1982, and he earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University three years earlier. He now lives in Virginia with his wife. They have three adult children. As ABC News reported Monday, Rosenstein has begun telling colleagues he plans to leave the Justice Department by the middle of March. Rosen is Barr's top pick to replace Rosenstein, according to a Justice Department official familiar with the matter. The White House announced Trump's intent to nominate Rosen in a news release late Tuesday.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON—The White House on Tuesday selected Jeffrey Rosen, the No. 2 official at the Transportation Department, to be deputy attorney general, putting a seasoned bureaucrat in charge of the day-to-day operations of a Justice Department battered by political storms and suffering strained morale. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Rosen will replace Rod Rosenstein, who tried for two years to steady the department and its tumultuous relationship with the White House. His nomination comes just days after William Barr was confirmed as attorney general. Mr. Rosenstein, who has agreed to stay on during the transition, will depart in mid-March, officials said. In the Transportation Department, Mr. Rosen is known as a sharp and apolitical lawyer familiar with the levers and gauges of government. But despite a long career in Washington, he has never worked in the Justice Department, which critics say makes him an unusual choice for a job in which a main task will be overseeing the nation’s federal prosecutors. Like Mr. Barr and several other top Justice Department officials, Mr. Rosen has never been a federal prosecutor. But he was a longtime lawyer at the firm Kirkland & Ellis, where Mr. Barr also worked, and held senior roles in both the Transportation Department and White House Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush. Mr. Barr, who was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, agreed to serve as Mr. Trump’s attorney general on condition that he be able to choose his own deputy. He and Mr. Rosen have known each other professionally for years. Mr. Barr, who also served as Mr. Bush’s deputy attorney general, said during his confirmation hearing that he wanted a No. 2 who would be a solid manager. Mr. Rosen’s supporters say he has that kind of experience. In a statement Tuesday, Mr. Barr called Mr. Rosen “a distinguished lawyer who has served at the highest levels of government and the private sector.” Mr. Rosenstein, who served for more than a decade as Maryland’s U.S. attorney under both Democratic and Republican administrations, faced an usually bright spotlight as deputy attorney general, largely because of his decision early in his tenure to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel over the Russia investigation. Mr. Rosenstein supervised that inquiry after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself in light of his work on the Trump campaign. That recusal destroyed Mr. Sessions’s relationship with the president, leaving Mr. Rosenstein to cultivate ties to the White House and navigate some of the department’s most politically charged issues. It also made him a frequent target of criticism from President Trump and the highest profile deputy attorney general in recent history. In past administrations, the deputy has hardly been a household name. But Mr. Rosen won’t likely oversee Mr. Mueller, as Mr. Barr has given no indication that he will recuse himself from the Russia investigation despite having written an unsolicited memo to Justice Department and White House officials last year criticizing a key aspect of it. Instead, Mr. Rosen’s role as second-in-command at the department may be lower profile: overseeing national security matters, running the day-to-day-operations, managing the department’s roughly 115,000 employees and federal law enforcement agencies. Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Jeffrey Rosen, a longtime litigator and deputy transportation secretary, to replace Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general. In his current post, the 60-year-old Rosen serves as the Department of Transportation's chief operating officer and is in charge of implementing the department's safety and technological priorities. He rejoined DOT in 2017 after previously serving as general counsel from 2003 to 2006. From 2006 until 2009, Rosen was the general counsel and a senior policy adviser at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He also worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Rosen held a variety of positions, including senior partner, at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the same law firm as the new attorney general, William Barr. Rosen spent nearly 30 years at Kirkland & Ellis in a variety of management roles, including acting as the co-head of the firm's Washington, D.C., office, he told senators at his confirmation hearing in March 2017. The current deputy attorney general, Rosenstein, is expected to leave his post in mid-March. His departure had been expected since Barr was confirmed as attorney general last week. Rosenstein had served as deputy for almost two years and it is common for new attorneys general to have their own deputies. Barr told people close to him that he wanted his own No. 2 as part of taking the attorney general job. Rosenstein began overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation. Barr now has control of Mueller's investigation, which is probing Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and contacts with the Trump campaign. Rosen, a Virginia resident who is married with three adult children, is a graduate of Harvard Law School.