When several GOP senators made a brief legislative push to protect the special counsel's investigation last spring, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear he wouldn't be allowing any such legislation to proceed.
"This is not necessary, there's no indication that Mueller is going to be fired," McConnell told Fox News in mid-April, shortly after the bill had been passed by the GOP-led Judiciary Committee. "We'll not be having this on the floor of the Senate."
Several days later, that short-lived Republican effort to do anything at all useful to aid Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in 2016 ended with a thud.
“I’ll let you know if I feel like I need to” move to protect Mueller, said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who had been one of several Republican members involved in the effort. “If I felt it needed to be, I would do it. I am firmly in the camp of, let Mueller do his job."
Well, Sen. Graham, time to put up or shut up. What say you now?
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis was another Republican who had worked to advance the bill, and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake both supported it and voted for it in committee.
If ever there were a time to re-up, it’s clearly now as Donald Trump’s fantasy of ousting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and getting a firmer grip on the Russia probe could finally be coming to fruition.
Of course, the GOP-led Judiciary Committee is busy trying to salvage the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by stymieing a different FBI investigation—into several different allegations of sexual assault against him.
That said, it would certainly be possible to push the same “protect Mueller” bill that has already cleared the committee—if McConnell would actually allow it on the floor for a vote.