President Donald Trump dealt a crushing blow to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday when he said he wished that he’d never appointed him after the former Alabama senator recused himself from the Russian collusion probe last year.
Sessions first incurred the president’s wrath after he caved in to pressure from Democrats and the liberal mainstream media in March 2017 to recuse himself from overseeing the investigation into allegations of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interests. Sessions did so after previously undisclosed meetings between himself and Russian diplomats came to light.
Trump took to Twitter to quote comments from a Wednesday CBS News interview with House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) concerning the chief executive’s sense of betrayal over Sessions’ recusal.
“Rep. Trey Gowdy, ‘I don’t think so, I think what the President is doing is expressing frustration that Attorney General Sessions should have shared these reasons for recusal before he took the job, not afterward,” Trump tweeted.
“‘If I were the President and I picked someone to be the country’s … chief law enforcement officer, and they told me later, ‘oh by the way I’m not going to be able to participate in the most important case in the office, I would be frustrated too … and that’s how I read that — Senator Sessions, why didn’t you tell me before I picked you … There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!'” Trump wrote, paraphrasing Gowdy.
“And I wish I did!” Trump added in his own words.
Rep.Trey Gowdy, “I don’t think so, I think what the President is doing is expressing frustration that Attorney General Sessions should have shared these reasons for recusal before he took the job, not afterward. If I were the President and I picked someone to be the country’s….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018
….chief law enforcement officer, and they told me later, ‘oh by the way I’m not going to be able to participate in the most important case in the office, I would be frustrated too…and that’s how I read that – Senator Sessions, why didn’t you tell me before I picked you…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018
….There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!” And I wish I did!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018
When asked about Trump’s tweets and why the president has not yet fired Sessions, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said during Wednesday’s daily media briefing, “The president has made his viewpoint very clearly known, and I don’t have any personnel announcements at this point.”
Trump and Sessions — who was the first incumbent U.S. senator to endorse Trump’s presidential candidacy — have experienced a tumultuous relationship ever since Sessions blindsided Trump with the recusal. Even though Sessions has promoted Trump’s immigration enforcement and border security priorities, among other key agenda items, his efforts to curry favor with Trump have been in vain.
Rumors of Sessions’ impending firing ebbed and flowed over the past several months as Trump targeted Sessions multiple times both on Twitter and verbally. Yet Sessions has managed to cling to his post — even after he reportedly drafted a resignation letter last spring that Trump ultimately refused.
Related: Former Prosecutor: ‘Totally Unnecessary’ Sessions Recusal Created ‘Mess’
When Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, he cited his growing frustration with Comey’s refusal to admit publicly that Trump himself wasn’t under investigation as one of the reasons for the firing. If Trump were to fire Sessions while special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe drags on, it could cause further problems and ignite another backlash.
Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah,) a Fox News contributor and the former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, insisted Wednesday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that Sessions “is the attorney general in name only.”
“He is absolutely worthless. The sooner the president names a new attorney general, the better,” Chaffetz said. “He should never have recused himself. He didn’t need to in a counterintelligence operation.”
“And we have major systemic problems at the FBI, and he is nowhere, nowhere on document production, nowhere on these things,” Chaffetz added. “I mean, you’ve got [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein running the place. It is time to get rid of Jeff Sessions.”
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.
(photo credit, article images: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)
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