A month before the 2016 election, Francisco co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed railing against the FBI, which he accused of using “ambush interviews” and other “heavy-handed” tactics to find whatever it could against McDonnell. Writing with a fellow Jones Day lawyer, he also zeroed in on Comey personally, suggesting that the FBI chief had used “kid gloves” in a successful effort to whitewash its investigation into possible criminal violations by President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

In Clinton’s case, they said, the FBI immunized only witnesses who could help deliver convictions, failed to investigate and charge all potential crimes and only construed “corruption” broadly when it came to McDonnell, and not Clinton.

Those past positions raise the question of whether Francisco might consider Mueller’s Russia probe another example of prosecutorial overreach, and whether he might share the view of Trump loyalists that Comey helped to launch the FBI’s Russia investigation for supposed partisan reasons.