U.S. Rep. Thomas Marino, R-Pennsylvania, hadn't even gotten a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing before he withdrew his name for consideration as President Donald Trump's drug czar.

The move on Tuesday came two days after a bombshell from The Washington Post/”60 Minutes” report about the congressman's role as chief advocate for a 2016 federal law that weakened the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's control over opioid distributors. These middlemen between the pharmaceutical manufacturers and retail pharmacies are suspected of being instrumental in the prescription painkiller abuse epidemic ravaging the country, whistleblowers and others in the joint investigation said.

On Monday, prominent senators said they would introduce legislation to repeal the law Marino championed. In a statement on his withdrawal as the nominee to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Marino said he was doing so to remove the distraction to the mission of the agency, an executive office that works to reduce drug use and its consequences.

“I look forward to remaining in service to the people of Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District and continuing my long record of championing solutions to better equip law enforcement to combat drugs,” Marino said in the statement.

Here are a few things to know about the man at the center of the investigation.

1. He's a second-career lawyer-turned-politician. Marino worked manufacturing jobs—including as a manufacturing manager at Frito-Lay Inc. in Muncy, Pennsylvania—before going to college at age 30, according to his LinkedIn profile. A Williamsport, Pennsylvania, native, he received his bachelor's degree from Lycoming College in Williamsport and his law degree from Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson Law.

After law school, he entered private practice at McNerney, Page, Vanderlin & Hall, an 11-attorney firm in Williamsport, where he remained for eight years, the last five as partner. He also served for 10 years as the elected district attorney of Lycoming County.

In 2002, President George W. Bush tapped Marino to be the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a position he held until 2007. He then worked as in-house counsel for Louis DeNaples, a business magnate and casino owner who had been investigated for possible ties to organized crime. Marino resigned that job in December 2009 to run for Congress. Marino defeated the incumbent Democrat in 2010 during the Tea Party wave and has been re-elected to the seat three times.

2. As a federal prosecutor, he went after pharmacy executives. Early in his tenure as U.S. attorney, Marino's office led the prosecution of Rite Aid Corp. officials for an $18 million accounting fraud that led to the largest reinstatement of corporate earnings to that point—$1.6 billion.The pharmacy chain's former CEO Martin Grass ended up pleading guilty to conspiring to defraud investigators and obstruct federal investigations and was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined $500,000.

“No one—not even the chairman of the board of a Fortune 500 company—is above the law,” Marino reportedly said in a written statement at the time of Grass' sentencing.

3. As a DA, he intervened in a friend's narcotics case.  While district attorney of Lycoming County in 1998, Marino unsuccessfully tried to have a friend's conviction for dealing cocaine erased from his record, according to a report by (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) The Citizens' Voice published during Marino's first congressional race in 2010. According to court records cited in the newspaper report, Marino hand-delivered an expungement motion to a judge relatively unfamiliar with criminal procedure a month after the presiding judge denied the request to have the drug-dealing conviction of Jay Kilheeney expunged. The second judge approved the expungement but later reversed himself when he learned of the other judge's previous denial of the request. Although the second judge ordered copies of his expungement order returned, Kilheeney kept a copy and relied on it, as well as a personal letter of reference from Marino, to obtain a Ford Motor Co. dealership, according to the news report.

Marino denied any wrongdoing in the case when it was used as political fodder by his opponent in the 2010 campaign.

Contact reporter Kristen Rasmussen at [email protected].