Posted on 07/19/2017 6:14:34 PM PDT by SkyPilot
President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”
In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the president also accused James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Mr. Trump criticized both the acting F.B.I. director who has been filling in since Mr. Comey’s dismissal and the deputy attorney general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia. Mr. Trump never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mr. Mueller, nor would he outline circumstances under which he might do so. But he left open the possibility as he expressed deep grievance over an investigation that has taken a political toll in the six months since he took office.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Actually, post 189 states how Sessions chose to interpret the regulation in order to justify why he put his tail between his legs and ran.
Read the regulation linked in post 203 and see my comment at post 213.
If he could remain impartial he didn't need to be removed from any investigation. As to "appearance of a conflict of interest in public perception", well, that's just a matter of opinion that should be left up to the President to decide whether or not he wished to let the court of public opinion render a verdict.
JFK only had his brother as AG....you think Holder would have gotten Obama in this position?...this is war man...better open up your eyes....
Couldn't agree more. I guess if your expectation was an AG in the mold of Holder and Lynch, thoroughly political and controlled by the President, then Trump made the mistake of nominating a man of principle, integrity, and wedded to the concept of the Rule of Law. If Trump thinks he can find an AG who will do whatever he commands, then it will be a long search for a replacement.
The reverberations of this fit of pique will be felt among his supporters. I don't think he understands how respected Sessions is. Will more resignations follow, including Steve Miller and Kris Kobach? Who will be the next scapegoat?
Trump can’t take back the audio. Sessions will resign later today. No clarification can take back those words. Sessions is a proud man.
Au contraire. Sessions is hated by the left. They will celebrate his resignation, something they have advocated ever since his confirmation. Every Dem voted against his confirmation except for Mancin.
If somebody has the authority to fire him, that person would qualify as his supervisor for purposes of determining whether he was capable of fulfilling the requirements of the position, including doing investigations in an impartial manner.
Thank you. I’d already read it from other sources.
My eyes are open and I see an ill prepared president trying to use the AG as a personal attorney.
Thanks. This has been an interesting discussion.
Don’t count on it. We don’t know the game that’s being played yet. Underestimate President Trump & AG Sessions at your peril.
That theme and variations of it are described in comments at CTH, Transcript of President Trump Wednesday Interview With New York Times
Examples ...
Misdirection. Trump is a magician. He puts stink on Borris the Squirrel and the media hounds chase it for 9 months. Sessions is going after the pedophiles. Trump hates pedophiles, hates them. Really hates them. Sessions is doing exactly what Trump wants, Sessions has no time to deal with Borris the Squirrel chasers.Take down the pedo's and watch Swamp, Inc. dry up.
One more thing, Trump said in bold letters he has no control over what Sessions does. That is the message he put on a billboard in this interview. Something is coming that requires Trump be far away from it.
President Trump understands that he cannot depend on Congress, or even midterm elections, to give him the support he needs. He needs blackmail. I know that sounds bad, but it is the truth. He has to use the DoJ as a weapon.
Most of Congress is dirty as hell. Trump knows this. Hell, it's the worst kept secret in Washington. Everyone in the "swamp" from Congress to various officials are creatures of their own self-enrichment and the only thing that takes precedence to that is saving their own skins.
Thus, President Trump, in order to push forward his agenda, will need to threaten these people with exposing their corruption. He will have to make an example or two up front, but following that he will hold all of the leverage.
Let me be clear: this is not how government should work. But President Trump did not create nor cause the corruption that already exists. So he can, clear of conscience, use it to work for the American people.
To do this, he has to have an AG who he can absolutely trust 100%. Sessions fits the bill there.
3. Sessions loyalty and public backing of Trump in the campaign is a huge asset to Trump, but also a liability to him. It means that Trump's enemies can always question Sessions' independence if he moves against major swamp figures, esp Obama or Clinton.
... The strategy has therefore been to create cover for Sessions so that when the hammers start to drop, he is seen as independent and squeaky clean.
5. To achieve this, Trump & Sessions have since his appointment as AG (i) minimized public contact with each other, with Sessions keeping a relatively low profile working in the shadows, (ii) engineered Sessions recusal from `muh Russia' (anyone who thinks Trump wasn't fully in on this doesn't understand how Trump operates), (iii) appointed Rosenstein, who is not pro-Trump - again, strengthening Sessions' appearance of independence and now (iv) Trump criticizes Sessions in the NYT of all places, which amplifies the perception (to a liberal audience) that Trump has no control over Sessions / may have turned on Sessions.
Well, we’ll see tom... oops- today.
Can’t see Trump benefitting from anyone but Rudy as a replacement though. I assume that ship has sailed.
Sessions should have been placed in charge of the Judiciary Committee after the Reps took back control of the Senate. He had been the ranking member. McConnell disliked Sessions who fought against the RINOs in the Senate. McConnell screwed him by appointing Enzi from WY.
I just kind of skimmed the rest of your post. Having made a long career in the government and being naive aren't mutually exclusive. That he accepted the advice from a bunch of democrats (no doubt supported by never-Trump Republicans) on whether he should recuse himself tells me more about his decision-making than a whole bunch of paragraphs lauding a long history of government service and being a strong conservative.
The DOJ Ethics Office is composed of career employees. "Employees should always seek the advice of an ethics official when contemplating any action that may be covered by the rules."
Since Sessions was also a career DOJ employee, he respected their opinion and their role within DOJ. And no doubt Sessions learned of the ongoing FBI investigation of the Trump campaign that had begun in July 2016. This had to be factored into his decision.
Instead of looking for reasons that he should recuse himself, he should have found some people to lay out all the reasons that it wasn't necessary. But I guess he thought that maintaining his own self-image as a man of unquestionable integrity was more important to him than helping the President.
"Helping the President" is not the role of the Attorney General of the United States. The mission of DOJ: "To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans."
One thing I've really noticed since the election is that the media and the Democrats are waging a full-scale war with the aim of destroying Trump's presidency. IMO, only a damned fool voluntarily lays down his arms when the enemy is attacking, just to avoid any appearance of unfairness.
The Dems most hated person in the Trump administration, aside from Trump himself, was Jeff Sessions. They feared his expertise and conservative views. Sessions worked for DOJ for 20 years and was in the Senate for another 20 years. He knows how the system operates in both the Executive and Legislative branches. He is a dangerous man for the Dems. Now that he will be gone, they can breathe a sigh of relief. The Establishment took out one more in addition to Flynn. Bannon is probably next.
Bumping to read and reread over the week/
Thanks!
I find the CTH explanation too clever by half. Sessions will not allow himself to be demeaned and humiliated in such a way. I still predict that Sessions will resign before the week is up.
i see unprecedented attacks from all sides on a sitting President....its 2017, not 1955. You’re little hero is ill prepared for times...scared of his own shadow. At the last hearing, he actually said that Kamala Harris made him “nervous”....sounded like my 84 year old mother..You really dont see whats happening?..really?
Rudy has no interest in being AG. What a circus it would be for his confirmation. Rudy has lots of baggage, personal and professional. I can see no reason for him to subject himself to this process.
Um, sorry, but Trump does NOT owe his victory to Sessions! He owes it to the people who voted for him! I didn’t vote for Trump because of Sessions.
Just for the record, those were three separate posts by three separate people, none of them being the propritor. Remarks on that thread are similar to the ones here. Some think Trump's remarks are to be taken and face value and that sessions is weak and needs to go; others more or less along the lines of the sentiment you and I have been expressing.
I can picture Trump and Sessions "toying" with the press. I'm not saying that is what is going on, just that I consider that sort of behavior as eminently possible. This is war, and deception is to be expected.
Sessions’ bending over backwards to appear completey clean opened the door to unintended consequences. Trump mkaes a very good point. But I still thin Sessions is a good man, perhaps a bit too acquiescent.
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