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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, intent on shielding popular vote loser Donald Trump (and maybe himself) continues to refuse to bring to the floor bipartisan legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller. So senators are now trying to come up with a "plan b" that would be harder for McConnell to stonewall, Sen. Richard Blumenthal told NBC News:
The discussions “involve assuring the evidence is preserved and reports are done if the special counsel is fired or other political interference is undertaken by the president,” Blumenthal told NBC News.
Notably, Blumenthal added, some GOP senators are participating in the effort.
“There’s strong interest on the Republican side in avoiding a constitutional crisis,” said Blumenthal, who’s also drafting a measure to protect Rosenstein but declined to provide details.
Some Judiciary Committee members believe the fresh effort would be politically harder for McConnell to reject since it focuses primarily on transparency and not the president’s personnel decisions—and it could apply to all future special counsels.[…]
According to three people briefed on the discussions, ideas include: Requiring that Congress receive Mueller’s final report; allowing Mueller, in the event he is fired, to release his findings publicly; or allowing him to resign and release his work if he feels his investigation is being improperly stifled.
It's possible it would be politically easier to accomplish. But it's McConnell we're talking about here, the guy who says the Congress doing its job by providing a check on the executive in the form of the bill passed by the Judiciary Committee would be "unconstitutional" and that the whole exercise is silly anyway, because Trump isn't "foolishly" considering firing Mueller (right) and "I don't think that's going to happen." It's possible that Trump actually firing Mueller would be enough to make McConnell figure it out, but seems pretty darned unlikely from here.
McConnell has made his choice, and his choice is sticking with Trump. Just like it was in the fall of 2016 when he was actively working to cover up the extent of Russia's meddling in the election.