What would happen if Trump fired Rosenstein
But simply firing Rosenstein may not mean obstruction. Paul Rosenzweig, a former prosecutor and professor at George Washington University Law School, said Trump’s profligate firing habits could help immunize him against the allegation that he’s trying to foil the Russia investigation. “You could say that this strengthens the obstruction case against Trump because he appears to fire people when they get too close to him or his friends in this investigation,” Rosenzweig said. “But you can also argue that Trump has gotten rid of dozens of people in his administration at this point, and the pattern isn’t obstruction of justice — it’s that he fires people who piss him off.”
Rosenzweig added, though, that even if Rosenstein’s firing is a prelude to ending Mueller’s investigation, the probe could be harder to stop than Trump anticipates. The raid in April on the office of presidential lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen was conducted by prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, rather than Mueller’s investigators, and Mueller also worked with former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which means that these lines of inquiry — and perhaps others — could be continued without Mueller.