Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who had overseen Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, will resign within the next month, multiple outlets reported Wednesday. The impending departure is expected to follow the confirmation of William Barr, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace the sacked Jeff Sessions at the top of the Department of Justice. Despite enduring well over a year of public broadsides from the president over the Russia investigation, reports suggest Rosenstein is leaving of his own volition and not being forced out, as has been the fate of so many other Trump administration officials who have found themselves on their tempestuous boss’s bad side.

Just a few months prior, the idea that Rosenstein, who took the reins of the Mueller inquiry after Sessions recused himself in the early days of the Trump presidency, could make such a pedestrian exit would have been inconceivable. Much of his tenure at the D.O.J. was underscored by attacks from the president, who objected to his appointment of Mueller to replace James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017—a decision based on part, Trump claimed, on a memo from Rosenstein. “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!” he tweeted in June 2017. “Witch Hunt.” The relationship only grew more contentious from there, as Trump ramped up his assault on the Russia investigation, and Rosenstein repeatedly defended the special counsel against the president’s threats to fire or constrain him—even as the deputy attorney general’s own job security became a matter of public speculation.

That speculation reached a fever pitch last fall, when The New York Times reported that Rosenstein had pitched a plan to secretly record Trump and enlist aides to invoke the 25th Amendment to declare the president unfit for office. His axing seemed all but certain, and reports circulated that Rosenstein planned to tender his resignation, throwing the fate of the Mueller probe into question. Trump, apparently, was all too ready to fire Rosenstein, but after an Oval Office meeting to smooth things over, the deputy attorney general stayed on.

Since November, when Trump unceremoniously ousted Sessions and replaced him with Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker—a Mueller critic who had publicly discussed ways to undermine the Russia probe prior to getting the gig—Rosenstein has played more of a supporting role. His choice of Whitacker, too, prompted fears that Trump was angling to quash the Mueller probe.

Such concerns have largely faded in recent weeks, as the inquiry draws to a close and a new Democratic majority takes power in the House. Firing Mueller at this point would assuredly trigger heavy scrutiny, and a possible impeachment effort by Democrats, who have already suggested they may attempt to oust Trump pending the special counsel’s report. Rosenstein had long been seen as the protector of the Mueller probe, the Justice department bureaucrat who stood between an unhinged president and the special counsel investigating him. But such a defender may no longer be necessary.

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