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House G.O.P. Breaks Into Open Warfare With Rosenstein, Demanding Files

Rod J. Rosenstein, right, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, defended the Russia investigation before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — For months, their sparring had been indirect, stern letters exchanged, pointed threats traded through the news media. But on Thursday, the ever-intensifying skirmishes between Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and conservative House Republicans broke into an ugly public fight.

On the House floor, Republicans voted in lock step to give the Justice Department seven days to produce sensitive documents related to the Russia inquiry and the F.B.I.’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email use. Though nonbinding, the measure was intended to put Mr. Rosenstein on notice that House lawmakers were willing to take punitive action — potentially including impeachment — if their demands were not met.

In the House Judiciary Committee, conservative Republicans hauled Mr. Rosenstein and the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, before television cameras to accuse them of hiding information from Congress to protect their own interests. In Mr. Rosenstein’s case, some Republicans charged outright misconduct related to the investigation into Russian election interference.

The two leaders, both appointed by President Trump, defended the special counsel investigation and their response to congressional investigators, even as they said they had been deeply troubled by the findings of a Justice Department inspector general’s report released this month on the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email case.

“There are mechanisms to resolve this without threatening to hold people in contempt,” Mr. Rosenstein said, urging lawmakers to work with him rather than threaten him. “We are not in contempt of this Congress. We are not going to be.”

Democrats accused Republicans of concocting a political distraction to further bloody the reputation of the Justice Department as it investigates President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Judiciary Committee Democrat, called the floor vote “clearly a pretext for a move against Mr. Rosenstein that the majority already has planned.”

Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois, drove the point home to Mr. Rosenstein: “They want to impeach you; they want to indict you; they want to get rid of you. Mr. Rosenstein, good luck. We’re in the minority.”

In the year since he appointed Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel, Mr. Rosenstein has emerged as one of the chief targets of House Republicans critical of the ongoing investigation. Thursday’s resolution passed along party lines, 226 to 183, as he and other department officials were working furiously to meet the requests of the Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan has expressed confidence that the department is showing a good-faith effort to meet Republican demands, and at least one committee chairman, Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee, said Thursday’s measure was not really necessary.

But Mr. Trump’s staunchest defenders demanded that vote.

“For over eight months, they have had the opportunity to choose transparency. But they’ve instead chosen to withhold information and impede any effort of Congress to conduct oversight,” said Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a sponsor of Thursday’s House resolution who raised the possibility of impeachment this week. “If Rod Rosenstein and the Department of Justice have nothing to hide, they certainly haven’t acted like it.”

Thursday’s hearing had been called to allow the law enforcement officials to field questions about the 500-page report from the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz. He found that the F.B.I. broke with longstanding policy in its handling of the Clinton email case, badly damaged its reputation and opened the door to accusations of political bias. The report criticizes at length two F.B.I. officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who exchanged voluminous texts disparaging Mr. Trump while they were helping to lead the investigation into both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump’s campaign.

But in the hearing room, Republicans advanced a wide range of topics, including now-familiar and largely unsubstantiated charges against Mr. Rosenstein and the special counsel investigation that he oversees. One by one, the deputy attorney general sought to dispose of them.

Contrary to Mr. Trump’s repeated assertions — including in a Thursday morning tweet — Mr. Rosenstein said he was “not aware of any disqualifying conflict of interest” involving Mr. Mueller.

Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, asked if Mr. Mueller had properly addressed the potential taint of political bias brought to the case by Mr. Strzok. Mr. Rosenstein said he was confident Mr. Mueller had taken “appropriate steps” to do so and would continue to.

Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, pressed Mr. Rosenstein about news media reports saying that he had threatened members of the House Intelligence Committee staff with a subpoena during a heated dispute this year. Mr. Rosenstein disputed that, too, daring his accusers to contradict his denial under oath.

He also batted back Republican criticism of his role in approving the secret surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide.

“If the inspector general finds that I did something wrong, then I’ll respect that judgment, but I think it’s highly, highly unlikely,” Mr. Rosenstein said.

Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who has been publicly supportive of the Mueller inquiry, told Mr. Rosenstein, “If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury. If you have evidence that this president acted inappropriately, present it to the American people. There’s an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied.”

Mr. Rosenstein pushed back, saying that Mr. Mueller was moving “as expeditiously as possible” to conclude his work and that the investigation had not actually gone on that long, given its mandate.

In a tense back-and-forth with Mr. Jordan, Mr. Rosenstein said, “Your use of this to attack me personally is deeply wrong.”

At one point, Mr. Rosenstein assured lawmakers, “I’m not a Democrat, and I’m not angry” — a reference to Mr. Trump’s frequent complaint that the Russia investigation is being led by “13 angry Democrats.”

Mr. Wray also made clear that he was not pleased to be locked in a fight with Republicans: “When I was minding my own business in private practice in Atlanta, I didn’t think I was going to be spending the first 10 months of my job staring down the barrel of a contempt citation for conduct that occurred long before I even thought about being F.B.I. director.”

The Judiciary Committee, which had strayed from the spotlight for the last year or so, has ramped up its own investigation of the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton case and certain aspects of the Russia investigation in recent weeks. On Wednesday, lawmakers from the Judiciary Committee interviewed Mr. Strzok for nearly 11 hours about his messages with Ms. Page and his role in both cases. Mr. Strzok said the messages had been taken out of context and did not affect his work, and Democrats on Wednesday night called for the interview transcript to be released to the public.

“As today’s transcript will make crystal clear, House Republicans are desperately trying to find something — anything — to undermine Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign,” Mr. Nadler and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a joint statement Wednesday night. “Unfortunately for them, they were entirely unsuccessful.”

Katie Benner contributed reporting.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Tug of War Intensifies On Access To Inquiry. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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