Jeffrey Rosen takes the reins of a Justice Department under pressure

The Justice Department is also overseeing a series of closely watched investigations that have drawn the president’s personal attention – including a criminal tax investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and an ongoing review by special attorney John Durham of the actions taken by federal investigators during the 2016 election campaign.

The remaining few weeks of Trump’s term are likely to be dominated by these and other issues, potentially putting Rosen at the center of numerous political battles with the White House. Although Mr. Barr was a staunch supporter of Trump’s agenda and priorities as head of the Department of Justice, he rejected the president’s calls to appoint a special lawyer to investigate electoral fraud and allegations against young Mr. Biden, and tried to isolate ongoing criminal investigations from political pressure.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

It was Trump’s anger over the revelation that Barr worked to prevent a federal investigation into Hunter Biden from becoming public before the election that led to his early departure, officials said.

Rosen, 62, has remained relatively discreet since he was confirmed as deputy attorney general last year, but has been heavily involved in politically sensitive civil litigations that the Trump administration has conducted, including several lawsuits against Trump critics that led to disagreements within the agency.

He spent most of his career in the private sector and in several other government agencies, including serving as No. 2 in the Department of Transportation before becoming deputy attorney general. He has no previous experience as a prosecutor.

Current and former officials say Rosen has a good relationship with the president, that they say he can expect his new interim attorney general to do things that Barr was not willing to do.

“He’s a constant manager behind the wheel … even if he’s taking the wheel during a storm,” said Brendan Groves, a career Justice Department employee who advised Rosen until January 2020. Asked where Rosen could draw When dealing with orders from the president, Groves called him a “person of principles” and said: “I’m sure he has some red lines, but I don’t know which ones they would be.”

Mr. Trump remains focused on the idea that the election results were fraudulent or manipulated – an allegation not supported by his own government’s investigative agencies and refuted by numerous state ballot recounts and audits.

The president particularly criticized several high-ranking advisers for, in his opinion, not doing enough to defend him and has increasingly sought advice from conspiring advisers in recent weeks. At a controversial meeting in the Oval Office last week, the president discussed the prospect of appointing conservative lawyer Sidney Powell as a special lawyer to investigate his allegations of electoral fraud. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Powell on Monday that she would not be nominated for any office, according to people familiar with the conversation. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

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Chief Executive Patrick Byrne, who attended Powell’s Oval Office meeting last week, said she and her team drafted a 20-page memo at the request of the president about allegations of foreign interference in the 2020 election. The memo, shared by Byrne, calls on Trump to “immediately establish a task force – under the authority of the White House Special Council – to take all legal steps” to determine “true legal votes.”

Byrne said he and others were unable to send the memo – which at one point was called “Team Kraken Foreign Interference Findings”, according to the file’s metadata – to Trump. Ms. Powell said she plans to “release the Kraken”, a reference to a legendary sea monster that symbolizes the evidence she claims to have electoral fraud.

In addition to the president’s demands for electoral fraud investigations, Rosen may have to deal with the political consequences of the pardons that Trump’s advisers said the president is considering before leaving office, including for his family members and for Giuliani.

On Tuesday, Trump granted 15 pardons, including a former campaign adviser and several former military contractors convicted of murders of Iraqi civilians during the war. He issued another 26 pardons on Wednesday, including former campaign president Paul Manafort, longtime adviser Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law.

The president’s anger towards Barr grew months before his departure was announced, while Trump unsuccessfully agitated for Durham to release a report on his findings and for the department to release documents related to the investigation in Russia, advisers said. But advisers asked the president to keep Barr in his post, stressing that there was no clear candidate to succeed him in office and deal with Justice Department affairs differently, a government official said.

Earlier this month, after Barr told the Associated Press that the Justice Department found no evidence of electoral fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election, the president and attorney general had what an officer described as a heated and litigation. When the meeting ended, however, aides believed that Barr would remain in office for the remainder of Trump’s term, the official said.

But when The Wall Street Journal reported that Barr had worked to keep a federal investigation into Hunter Biden under wraps before the election, Trump was livid, an official said, telling aides he believed Barr had essentially stolen his election and referring to a poll suggesting that some people who voted for Biden would not have voted if they had known about the investigation.

Days later, after another meeting mediated in part by the White House council Pat Cipollone, President tweeted a copy of Mr. Barr’s resignation letter, which has garnered praise for Trump’s policies.

—Aruna Viswanatha contributed to this article.

Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at [email protected] and Byron Tau at [email protected]