Trump Assails Justice Dept., Siding With House Conservatives in Dispute

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But those efforts have not quieted two of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters on Capitol Hill, Representatives Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio. In an unusual show of defiance of their committee chairman, they have insisted the agreement is not good enough and that they need access to an unredacted version of an August 2017 memo outlining the scope of Mr. Mueller’s investigation.

Democrats fear that the requests — many of which call on the department to ignore longstanding policy about what it shares with Congress — are merely meant to provide Mr. Trump with a reason to fire Mr. Mueller.

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the latest Republican efforts were “clearly trying to sabotage” the Mueller investigation and court a confrontation with Mr. Rosenstein.

“All of this noise is aimed at undermining the special counsel’s work as the investigation closes in on the president,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement. “The president’s attacks on the Department of Justice grow more paranoid by the day. The case for obstruction of justice — and the complicity of these House Republicans — grows day by day as well.”

Mr. Rosenstein has made clear he does not intend to go further.

The Justice Department wrote to Mr. Meadows and Mr. Jordan on Monday to deny them access to the document about the scope of the Russia inquiry, citing department policy against sharing information on a continuing investigation.

And on Tuesday, reacting to reports that Mr. Meadows had drafted articles of impeachment to use against him if needed, Mr. Rosenstein declared that the Justice Department would not be extorted.

“There have been people who have been making threats, privately and publicly, against me for quite some time,” he said at an event in Washington. “And I think they should understand by now, the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

Mr. Meadows fired back, saying that Mr. Rosenstein was stonewalling legitimate oversight requests and calling on him to resign.

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Last month, Mr. Trump said Mr. Rosenstein faced conflicts of interest and criticized him for signing a search warrant application to permit federal agents to eavesdrop on one of the president’s former campaign aides. Mr. Rosenstein assumed oversight of the investigation and appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel after the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself last year. Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked Mr. Sessions for his recusal.

The president has previously said he is frustrated that he is not supposed to be involved with Justice Department matters.

“I am not supposed to be involved with the F.B.I. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it,” Mr. Trump said in an interview last November.

The president’s threats, though vague, come at a time when he has been on the defensive after the disclosure of more than 40 questions that the special counsel would like him to answer. The questions touch on a variety of topics, including coordination with the Russians during the presidential campaign and actions Mr. Trump has taken as president and whether they were intended to derail the inquiry, undercutting the president’s repeated claims that the investigation is a “hoax.”

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Justice Dept. Won’t Be Extorted, Rosenstein Warns Republicans

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“If we’re going to accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses,” Mr. Rosenstein said. “We need to prepare to prove our case in court. And we have to affix our signature to the charging document.”

Mr. Meadows fired back, accusing Mr. Rosenstein of stonewalling and calling on him to resign.

“If he believes being asked to do his job is ‘extortion,’ then Rod Rosenstein should step aside and allow us to find a new deputy attorney general — preferably one who is interested in transparency,” Mr. Meadows, the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said in a statement.

The draft impeachment articles are unlikely to advance through the House, where the Judiciary Committee and possibly the full chamber would have a say. But they represent the most explicit threat yet to Mr. Rosenstein by lawmakers with close ties to Mr. Trump.

The lawmakers have been threatening to impose sanctions on or even impeach Mr. Rosenstein, 53, on and off for months as they have tangled over access to sensitive documents related to some of the F.B.I.’s most politically charged cases. Democrats have feared that Republicans would use any failure to comply as a pretext to fire the deputy attorney general.

The rebuke from Mr. Rosenstein was at odds with his earlier actions. He has worked to meet the demands of lawmakers, recently letting them review an almost completely unredacted F.B.I. memo on the opening of a still-active investigation of the Trump campaign, a highly unusual step.

Mr. Rosenstein also personally signed off on an F.B.I. raid of the home, office and hotel room of Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer. In the days that followed, the president and his allies in Congress escalated their criticisms of Mr. Rosenstein, whose oversight of the Russia investigation gives him power to narrow the scope of the inquiry. Democrats fear that a new deputy attorney general could hobble the investigation without ending it, a move that could create havoc ahead of the midterm elections.

While he was critical of Republican lawmakers, Mr. Rosenstein was more flattering of Mr. Trump during Tuesday’s event at the Newseum in Washington honoring the Constitution and the rule of law.

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He said that there is no threat “to the rule of law in America today” because it is protected by the Constitution.

He also fought back against accusations that Mr. Trump’s continued assailing of law enforcement officials has undermined the Justice Department’s traditional independence from political interference. Noting that the department is “not independent of the executive branch,” he said its mission was to enforce the law as well as carry out the priorities of the administration, and that the two were not in conflict.

Mr. Rosenstein sometimes spoke with the emphasis of a prosecutor giving closing arguments before a jury. At times he drew a copy of the Constitution from his breast pocket and brandished it to make a point.

But he also held forth on less weighty matters, including pronunciation of his own last name, an occasional topic of lighthearted debate in Washington.

“So, there’s no right answer to that,” he said. “My father pronounces it ‘stine.’ That’s how I pronounce it. But I actually have relatives who pronounce it ‘steen,’ so I’ll answer to either one.”

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