Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Trump: I won’t fire Jeff Sessions before midterm elections
By Bob Fredericks
August 30, 2018, 5:21 p.m.
New York Post
President Trump said Thursday that embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ job was safe at least until after the midterm elections in November.
“I just would love to have him do a great job,” Trump said Thursday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News.
Asked if he’d keep Sessions beyond November, Trump declined to comment.
Trump has repeatedly gored Sessions in private and in public for recusing himself in March 2017 from the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then appointed ex-FBI boss and decorated Vietnam veteran Robert Mueller as special counsel to conduct what’s become a wide-ranging probe, including whether Trump’s people conspired with the Russians and whether the president sought to obstruct justice.
Trump also has ridiculed Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama and an early supporter of his presidential candidacy, as “weak” for failing to probe Republican allegations of anti-Trump bias in the Justice Department and FBI.
Trump has also tried to pressure Sessions to quit, which would open the way to appointing a successor who could oust Mueller or rein in his inquiry — but the AG has defiantly remained on the job and declared that he won’t let partisan politics mar the department’s work.
Sessions’ inability to “control” his department was “a regrettable thing,” Trump said in an interview last week with Fox News, adding that the GOP-controlled Justice Department seems “to go after a lot of Republicans.”
Sessions responded then in a defiant statement, saying, “While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”
Trump’s comments to Bloomberg on Thursday echoed the predictions of some key Republicans in Congress, who are now saying they expect the president to oust Sessions after the elections in November despite warning him in the past that the Senate wouldn’t muster the votes to confirm a successor.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a one-time Trump foe turned reliable loyalist and frequent golf partner, said Tuesday that the relationship between Trump and Sessions is “beyond repair” and that the issues are “deeper” than the attorney general’s recusal.
“He is not the only man in the country that can be attorney general. He is a fine man. I’m not asking for him to be fired. But the relationship is not working,” Graham told NBC News.
“Is there somebody who is highly qualified that has the confidence of the president, and will also understand their job is to protect Mueller? Yes, I think we can find that person after the election if that is what the president wants.”
[N.S.: “[T]heir job is to protect Mueller”?! What, is Graham channeling the spirit of John McCain?]
With Bloomberg
1 comment:
I wonder if Sessions has thought about resigning.
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