Trump escalates A-G smackdown
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump escalated his long-running feud with attorney-general Jeff Sessions yesterday, pressing him to investigate those who are probing his administration.
Responding to Sessions’s declaration that he would not be influenced by politics, Trump tweeted that Sessions must “look into all of the corruption on the ‘other side’”, adding: “Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!”
The president’s tweets marked the second day of a highly public smackdown by Trump of his attorney-general.
Earlier this week, Trump, concerned by the legal downfall of two former advisers, accused Sessions of failing to take control of the Justice Department. Sessions punched back on Thursday, saying that he and his department “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations”.
Trump’s anger with Sessions boiled over in an interview with Fox News in which the president also expressed frustration with the plea agreement his one-time legal fixer Michael Cohen cut with prosecutors, implicating Trump in a crime that Cohen admitted. Trump said it might be better if “flipping” – co-operating with prosecutors in exchange for more favourable treatment – were illegal because people co-operating with the government “just make up lies” to get a break from prosecutors.
Some of the issues Trump raised with Sessions yesterday have either already been examined or are in the process of being investigated.
He cited two former FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were sharply criticised in a Justice Department inspector-general report in June for trading derogatory text messages about Trump. Strzok was fired by the FBI this month, while Page resigned from the bureau. – AP/African News Agency (ANA)