Who Is Rachel Brand? Justice Department's 3rd In Command Planning To Resign

The Justice Department's 3rd in command Rachel L. Brand is stepping down from her post, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Associate Attorney General Brand, who stepped into her position in May, will be resigning just nine months into her job, as the country’s largest law enforcement agency was on the receiving end of a President Donald Trump attack, reports said.

Brand became the first woman to be sworn into the associate attorney general position on May 22, 2017, after being nominated to the position by the president. She was the assistant attorney general in the office of legal policy for George W. Bush. Following that she worked for former president Barack Obama in the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Brand’s profile rose since she was next in line to assume the position of Deputy Attorney General currently held by Rod Rosenstein.

Brand ranks below Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who recused himself from Robert Mueller's Russian investigation — and Rosenstein who is currently overseeing Mueller's investigation into the Trump administration's ties with Russia. Rosenstein has endured attacks from Trump for his involvement in the investigation into the Russian collusion which the president, in the past has vociferously deemed a "witch hunt."

According to Brand’s associates, she plans on taking up a high profile job in the private sector following her resignation. However, Brand’s future intentions hasn’t been made public yet.

The news of Brand’s resignation follows Trump's amped up criticism against the FBI’s alleged bias against him in conjunction with the Russian investigation. A memo written by Republican lawmakers illustrates the criticism leveled against the Justice Department and the FBI’s alleged misguided quest to find Trump administration ties in the Russian collusion. The memo said the investigation was maligned by their political bias against Trump.

The memo claimed the FBI had overstepped their bounds when Rosenstein approved surveillance on Trump’s adviser Carter Page. Trump warned he might fire Rosenstein for the transgression.

Last week, Trump approved the release of the memo that the Democrats called a shameful act to discredit the Department Of Justice (DOJ), the FBI and Special Counsel Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, reports said.

“The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process,” the Democrats said in a statement.

The Democrats wrote a rebuttal to the Republican memo. The Democrats’ memo questioned the allegations on the FBI’s and DOJ’s abuse of power. Trump said he won’t release the Democrats’ memo.

White House counsel Donald McGahn said: "Although the President is inclined to declassify the February 5th Memorandum, because the Memorandum contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages, he is unable to do so at this time.”