With FBI Director James B. Comey’s termination, one Senate Democrat is accelerating plans to craft legislation for an independent counsel to investigate President Donald Trump and ties to Russia.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who was himself a federal prosecutor, told CQ Roll Call late Tuesday that he had been working on writing a bill that would look similar to the old lapsed statute for such outside prosecutors, but the effort will now accelerate.

“My preference is that Rod Rosenstein will do the right thing and appoint a special prosecutor, as I have been urging him to do,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a phone interview. “But, I am drafting legislation that I will be ready to introduce, and I am hopeful that Republicans will join in a bipartisan bill. I have not yet determined when I will actually introduce it.”

Rosenstein, the recently-confirmed deputy attorney general, is the point man on the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself after it was revealed that he had met with Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak.

On Comey’s actions, Rosenstein wrote a memo saying Comey was “wrong” to “usurp” the attorney general — then Loretta Lynch — by announcing in early July his conclusion that the Clinton email case should be closed “without prosecution.”