All of which makes attorney Paul Mirengoff's description for Power Line of the Department of Justice culture both timely and loaded with explanatory power. He writes:
More than any federal agency or department I’ve worked for, with, or against, the Justice Department resembles a cult. Its employees think they are special. They feel intense hostility towards the Department’s adversaries. They are fiercely loyal to the Department and compulsively committed to its ways of doing things. Outsiders are viewed with condescension and suspicion, if not contempt.He sees this causing DOJ, in the person of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to stonewall Congressional committees seeking to exercise oversight. It also has been a major frustration for the White House, mostly exhibited in irritation directed at Rosenstein's boss, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself.
Obviously, many DOJ employees do not buy fully into the cult, but many do. Those who rise to the top tend to embrace it the most.
As a witness himself in the business of firing FBI Director James Comey, Rosenstein also should have recused himself, but has refused to do so. Mirengoff would call this "acting to protect the DOJ cult" against outside interference. That explains why it happened but makes it neither right nor proper.
