WASHINGTON (CN) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned Wednesday as the country's chief law enforcement officer, saying in his resignation letter to President Donald Trump that he was doing so at "your request."
“I came to work at the Department of Justice every day determined to do my duty and serve my country,” Sessions wrote. “I have done so to the best of my ability, working to support the fundamental legal processes that are the foundation of justice.”
Trump announced in a separate tweet that he was naming Sessions' chief of staff Matthew Whitaker, a former United States attorney from Iowa, as acting attorney general.
The Justice Department then announced that Whitaker is taking over supervision of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation from Rod Rosenstein, the embattled deputy attorney general.
"The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice," DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said when asked who would be supervising Mueller's probe in the wake of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' resignation.
Rosenstein had been supervising the Russia probe - overseeing Mueller's budget, indictments and subpoenas - since it began in May 2017 because of Sessions' recusal from all matters related to the 2016 presidential campaign.
Whitaker appeared on a CNN panel last year and floated the idea of a potential Sessions replacement taking an ax to the special counsel investigation's budget instead of outright firing Mueller.
"I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn't fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt," Whitaker said.
In an op-ed from August 2017, Whitaker wrote Trump was "absolutely correct" that Mueller would be out of bounds if his probe looked into the Trump family's finances.
"It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump's finances or his family's finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else," Whitaker wrote. "That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel."
Whitaker also argued for a limited reading of Mueller's purview, saying Mueller would have to ask Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for "additional authority" before leafing through Trump's books.
"It is time for Rosenstein, who is the acting attorney general for the purposes of this investigation, to order Mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel," Whitaker wrote.
Response to these developments was swift and decidedly negative.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said via Twitter that given Whitaker's previous comments "advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, [he] should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general."
Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement that Session's forced resignation "is a dangerous and authoritarian step" that and "threatens the rule of law."