‘I would have picked somebody else’
Trump says he regrets making Sessions AG
WASHINGTON — President Trump says he regrets appointing Jeff Sessions as attorney general after the Alabama Republican decided to recuse himself from the Russia probe — a stunning public rebuke of a top Cabinet member.
Trump called the recusal by one of his earliest and strongest campaign supporters “very unfair to the president.”
“Sessions gets the job. Right after he gets the job he recuses himself,” Trump told The New York Times in an interview published last night. “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.”
Trump’s statement could further weaken an already strained relationship between the president and the attorney general, which soured after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to handle the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential ties to the Trump campaign team.
The president also told the Times he believes he’s not part of Mueller’s probe.
“I don’t think we’re under investigation,” he said. “I’m not under investigation. For what? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The harsh words come as several members of Trump’s campaign and White House inner circles are scheduled to appear before congressional committees next week as part of the ongoing investigations.
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is set to appear in a closed-door session before the Senate Intelligence Committee Monday. Kushner’s appearance is voluntary, according to his attorney Abbe Lowell.
Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort are expected to be among a panel of witnesses appearing Wednesday before an open session of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where they are likely to face questions about their June 2016 meeting with Russian operatives who claimed to have negative information about Hillary Clinton.
Emails between Trump Jr. and British-born publicist Rob Goldstone arranging the sitdown revealed that Trump agreed to the meeting to obtain the information, contradicting earlier statements that the session was arranged primarily to talk about Russian adoptions.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (DCalif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, requested documents and testimony from others who were present at the meeting last year with the younger Trump, Kushner and Manafort, including Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin.
In an interview with Kremlin-funded RT television, Veselnitskaya said she was willing to appear before Senate lawmakers.