Senate Democrats, intent on keeping questions about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia front and center, are turning to their next target: Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ top deputy.

Rod Rosenstein, a veteran U.S. attorney whom President Donald Trump has nominated to become the Justice Department’s No. 2, heads into his confirmation hearing Tuesday squarely in the eye of the firestorm over the Russia controversy that has engulfed the Trump presidency for weeks.


Sessions announced last week he would step aside from any federal probe involving the Trump campaign — in which the former Alabama senator was a central and enthusiastic figure. So the weight of the Russia investigation would fall on Rosenstein if he's confirmed.

Democrats are using what would usually be a noncontroversial nomination to extract as many concessions from Rosenstein as possible. The best case for the minority would be getting him to commit to naming a special prosecutor to investigate any collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Short of that, they want to eat up time — the most precious commodity in the Senate — and throw the Trump administration back into an uncomfortable, Russia-hued spotlight.

“Far and away the No. 1 issue that will face Mr. Rosenstein in his hearing is whether he will appoint a special prosecutor,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday in an interview with POLITICO. “I am strongly urging him to do so. The guidelines of the Justice Department fit this to a T.”

Schumer stressed that while “nobody has any concerns about [Rosenstein], his personality, his integrity,” the minority leader nonetheless said that for him, it would be “very difficult” to support Rosenstein if he didn’t commit to appointing an independent counsel outside DOJ’s chain of command to oversee the Russia probe.

Democrats argue that last week’s recusal by Sessions, who had not disclosed two previous contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak despite testifying that he “did not have communications with the Russians” during his confirmation hearing in January, was nowhere near sufficient.

In addition to pressing Rosenstein on how the Russia probe should be handled, Democrats are demanding more independent probes. Schumer on Monday wrote to the DOJ’s chief watchdog asking him to dig into the Trump administration’s handling of the matter.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Judiciary Committee that will question Rosenstein and another top DOJ nominee on Tuesday, said he would use all parliamentary tools at his disposal to block Rosenstein’s nomination until he commits to appoint an independent counsel.

“Whatever this nominee’s credentials — and he has, on paper, [an] impressive prosecutorial background — he is a political appointee, which I’m sure he recognizes,” Blumenthal said in an interview on Monday. “And the areas that need to be investigated here and potentially prosecuted involve highly sensitive political overtones and should be pursued without politics involved.”

Some committee Democrats, including Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, had called for the hearings for Rosenstein and the No. 3 Justice official, Rachel Brand, to be delayed due to questions surrounding the Trump DOJ’s handling of the probe. Hirono met privately with Rosenstein and Brand on Monday.

“At this point, I feel as though the entire department has been compromised,” Hirono said last week. “I would like to see an independent investigation.”

Senate Republicans who will take up the two DOJ nominations say there are deep inconsistencies in the Democrats’ call for a special prosecutor. They note that Democrats didn't demand one to look into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, even after former Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton in an encounter that raised questions about the appearance of impropriety.

“I can’t help but notice the selective nature of these latest calls for a special counsel," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will say in his opening remarks at the hearing, according to excerpts released Monday evening. "Where were these calls from the other side when Attorney General Lynch was overseeing the Clinton investigation? ... It would be easier to credit calls for special counsels if they were made with some consistency and intellectual honesty.”

Saying Rosenstein's independence is "beyond reproach," Grassley noted that former Obama attorney general Eric Holder tapped Rosenstein, along with then-U.S. attorney Ronald Machen, in 2012 to lead the investigation into leaks of classified information to the press. The leaks had also prompted calls for a special prosecutor,

"That's ridiculous,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of the Democrats’ strategy. “He's a career prosecutor with an outstanding reputation. That's just politics.”

Indeed, Rosenstein — first appointed as U.S. attorney under George W. Bush and held over under Barack Obama — has a top-notch reputation among members of both parties. On Monday, nearly 130 former U.S. attorneys wrote to the committee’s leaders, praising the prosecutor’s “tireless work ethic, unassailable integrity, careful legal thinking and prudent judgment.”

“Many of us served alongside Rod, know him personally, and can vouch for his outstanding reputation — both as a fair and extraordinarily effective prosecutor, and as a person of the highest integrity,” the lawyers wrote in the letter.

Though Russia will be in the spotlight considering Rosenstein’s role in the federal probe, Democrats also plan to grill the two DOJ nominees on several other hot-button issues.

Multiple Democratic sources said the nominee will be asked about voting rights and the Trump administration’s executive orders, including the updated travel ban issued Monday that temporarily halts immigration from six majority-Muslim nations. Another topic could be Trump's accusation — which he made without offering evidence — that Obama ordered an illegal wiretap of Trump Tower.

Democratic senators, including Blumenthal, are also sure to reiterate their demand for Grassley to call Sessions back before his panel to clarify the Russia issue — a request the Iowa Republican has already denied.

Republicans, by and large, are satisfied with Sessions’ recusal and the ongoing investigations by the House and Senate intelligence panels into Russian interference in the election.

“In his opinion, [recusal] was needed and he’s done that,” Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer said of Sessions. “I don’t know what more could be done on it.”