combined with a dogged focus on violent repeat offenders was the anchor of Rosenstein’s approach." Rosenstein regarded the heroin and opioid epidemic as a public health crisis, hired a re-entry specialist to help ex-offenders adjust to life outside of prison, and prosecuted several individual cases of corrupt police officers. Judicial nomination In 2007, President Bush nominated Rosenstein to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Rosenstein was a Maryland resident at the time. Maryland's Democratic United States Senators, Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, blocked Rosenstein's nomination, claiming he did not have strong enough ties to Maryland. Deputy Attorney General of the United States Nomination and confirmation President Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General on February 1, 2017. He was one of the 46 United States Attorneys ordered on March 10, 2017, to resign by Attorney General Jeff Sessions; Trump declined to accept his resignation. Rosenstein was confirmed by the Senate on April 25, 2017, by a vote of 94–6. Comey memo On May 8, 2017, President Trump directed Sessions and Rosenstein to make a case against FBI Director James Comey in writing. The next day, Rosenstein handed a memo to Sessions providing the basis for Sessions's recommendation to President Trump that Comey be dismissed. In his memo Rosenstein asserted that the FBI must have "a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them". He ends with an argument against keeping Comey as FBI director, on the grounds that he was given an opportunity to "admit his errors" but that there is no hope that he will "implement the necessary corrective actions." Some critics argued that Rosenstein, in enabling the dismissal of Comey amid an investigation into Russian election interference, damaged his own reputation. After administration officials cited Rosenstein's memo as the main reason for Comey's dismissal, an anonymous source in the White House said that Rosenstein threatened to resign. Rosenstein denied the claim and said he was "not quitting," when asked directly by a reporter from Sinclair Broadcast Group. On May 17, Rosenstein told the Senate he knew that Comey would be fired before he wrote his memo that the White House initially used as justification for President Trump firing Comey. The New York Times reported in August 2020 that concerns about a possible counterintelligence threat posed by Trump's personal and financial dealings with Russia