Prez slams Sessions, AG responds
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a rare public defense of his work at the helm of the Justice Department yesterday after President Trump blasted him on Twitter for not doing enough to investigate claims that FBI agents improperly monitored a former Trump campaign aide.
“Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse,” Trump tweeted yesterday. “Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc.”
Trump has repeatedly denounced the surveillance of former campaign associate Carter Page, charging that the move was politically motivated, based on a memo released by House intelligence committee Republicans. Trump was apparently responding to a report that Sessions had directed the inspector general’s office to look into the matter.
“Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy?” Trump’s tweet continued, referring to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who was appointed to the post in 2012 by former President Barack Obama. “Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!”
The long-simmering tensions between the president and his attorney general have spilled to Trump’s Twitter feed before. But unlike his past rebukes of Sessions, this time the attorney general responded.
“We have initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary,” Sessions said in a statement. “As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.”
The public denunciation puts added pressure on Sessions, who recused himself from the ongoing probe into Russia meddling.
“No attorney general can be effective in his job if the president is constantly privately and publicly pressuring him to engage in politically motivated prosecutions, or to not investigate those the president doesn’t want investigated,” said Andrew Wright, a Savannah law school professor who served as associate counsel to Obama.
It also comes as special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is investigating a period last year when Trump was seemingly trying to oust Sessions from his post, according to a Washington Post report last night. Mueller’s focus, the Post said, is to determine whether Trump’s efforts to drive Sessions out was part of a pattern to obstruct justice.