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Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) strongly signaled that Democrats wouldn’t support Trump’s pick to be FBI director unless a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate Trump and Russia.

Video:

https://youtu.be/YgygWAukdWM

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Transcript via NBC’s Meet The Press:

CHUCK TODD:

Senator Warner, who’s the vice chair of the Senate intel committee conducting the intel investigation, he said unless the deputy attorney general Rosenstein appoints a special prosecutor, he thinks it’s going to be very difficult to get any Democratic support for a new FBI director. Do you plan on linking those two issues, not trying to tell the Democratic senators “withhold support until there’s a special prosecutor named”?

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER:

Well each Democratic senator’s gonna make up his or her own mind. But I think the two are very much related. If you have an independent special prosecutor, then you really have the ability to get to the bottom of this, so it matters in terms of who the FBI director is. You need both of them really to have a lot of courage, to resist any pushback not to do the investigation. You need both to be very experienced. That’s important as well. And I think both should be nonpartisan, not from either political party. Those would be my criteria. But I think the two are linked because they’re both involved in one of the most serious investigations we’ve seen in a very long time.

Schumer gave his red state Democrats an out by saying that each Democrat has to make up their mind, but the reality is that Democrats are gearing up to oppose any Trump nominee to lead the FBI unless they get a special prosecutor to investigate the President’s campaign and Russia.

If his previous pattern of behavior holds true, Trump will appoint someone who will protect him and try to kill the Russia investigation. Democrats are going to make Republicans hitch their political futures to Trump and support his FBI Director most likely on their own.

Republicans are going to own this, and don’t expect Democrats to give them a shred of bipartisan political cover.