I am encouraged to hear Sen. Susan Collins express concern that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will no longer be overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. I am even more encouraged to hear her insist that the investigation must proceed unimpeded.

But she needs to do more, and she needs to do it quickly. Matthew Whitaker’s elevation to acting attorney general is a desperate act and bears all the hallmarks of an attempt on the part of the president to obstruct justice. Only the most willfully obtuse could view it in any other light.

Given those circumstances, compounded with Whitaker’s public ruminations on the validity of the investigation (as he expressed in an Aug. 6, 2017, CNN commentary) and how it could be effectively halted via defunding (as he told CNN’s Don Lemon on July 26, 2017), not to mention Whitaker’s relationship with Sam Clovis (himself a witness in the investigation), the acting attorney general must follow Department of Justice protocols and recuse himself, as then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions did before him.

In the meantime, Collins should be moving heaven and earth to protect the rule of law, and the integrity of Mueller’s investigation. Pushing for a vote on the bipartisan bill protecting the special counsel passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April – which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to put before the Senate for a full vote – would be an excellent start.

Jason Brown

Portland