Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter detailing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) rationale for calling for the dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey is heavy on professional grievance.

The memo, submitted to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, strongly suggests that officials at the Justice Department felt Comey improperly assumed prerogatives that rightly belong to career prosecutors at DOJ, instigating a bureaucratic turf war that left department officials displeased.

The memo opens with Rosenstein’s conclusion that Comey’s press conference on July 5, 2016, where he announced he would not recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, “usurped” the authority of his superiors at the Justice Department.

The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors. The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed Attorney General Loretta Lynch had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department.

The use of terms like “usurp” and “supplant” are both arresting and telling, as is Rosenstein’s assertion that Comey effectively “assumed command” of DOJ. This section of the memo argues Comey’s public statements stripped DOJ officials of prosecutorial discretion. In disclosing legal conclusions to the public, the former director foreclosed a number of options for department officials, leaving them little choice but to decline to pursue a case against Clinton. What’s more, the memo also states it was improper for Comey, whose role is restricted to finding facts, to reach any legal conclusions in the first place. (Read more from “Comey Dismissal Memo Suggests Turf War Between DOJ, FBI” HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/05/comey-dismissal-memo-suggests-turf-war-doj-fbi/