HUNDREDS PROTEST FIRING OF SESSIONS
Gathering at Faso’s district office appears to be largest of his term
Anger and frustration were at a boiling point Thursday evening as several hundred protesters stood along Broadway in Midtown to protest President Donald Trump firing U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replacing him with a man who has openly criticized the investigation of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
The demonstration, in front of U.S. Rep. John Faso’s district office, began before 5 p.m., and the crowd — on both sides of the street, and partly in the street — had swelled to 500 by 6 p.m. The event first announced Thursday morning.
“It’s outrageous that Sessions was let go, and it’s another example of obstruction of justice,” said Gardiner resident Laura Wong-Pan. “It was timed as a retaliation for what happened in the election and it just outraged me.”
“This is beyond disturbing,” said Saugerties resident Margie Leopold. “They (Trump and his aides) are frightening. Technically, it is a constitutional crisis.”
Trump dismissed Sessions on Wednesday, the day after the midterm elections cost Republicans their majority in the House, and replaced him on an interim basis with Matthew Whitaker, who has said publicly that special counsel Robert Mueller has exceeded his authority in the Trump-Russia probe. Whitaker now will over-
"It’s outrageous that Sessions was let go, and it’s another example of obstruction of justice. It was timed as a retaliation for what happened in the election and it just outraged me." — Gardiner resident Laura Wong-Pan
see Mueller’s investigation, which has been in progress for 18 months.
Faso, a first-term Republican congressman, was among those defeated Tuesday, falling to Rhinebeck Democrat Antonio Delgado.
Protest organizer Susan Jaworkski, of the group Indivisible NY19, said Trump
is making blatant moves to protect himself while consistently taking actions that are abhorrent to common decency.
“I think he’s trying to creep forward with more power,” she said. “So it (firing Sessions) could be obstruction of justice, but I also think he’s trying to change what the president is allowed to do.”
The name indivisible NY19 is a reference to the local congressional district
being the New York 19th.
Demonstrations outside Faso’s Kingston office are routine — the usually are held midday on Fridays — but Thursday’s protest appeared to be the largest since he took office in January 2017.
Faso said by phone earlier Thursday that Sessions’ firing came as no surprise, given Trump’s unhappiness with his attorney general not protecting him from Mueller’s probe. Sessions
recused himself early last year from playing any role in the probe, and the job of overseeing Mueller was, until Wednesday, in the hands of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
“I think it was pretty clear that President Trump was dissatisfied ... through numerous statements to that effect, so I think it was widely expected this (the firing) would occur right after the election,” Faso said.
Trump often says it’s a
“hoax” that his campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, and he frequently calls Mueller’s investigation, which has resulted in 32 criminal charges and four guilty pleas, a “witch hunt.”
Faso said he was not convinced that previous statements about the probe by Whitaker necessitate that he, too, recuse himself from the matter.
“I don’t think that would
have a bearing on the matter one way or the other,” the congressman said.
Delgado declined a request to be interviewed Thursday but issued a statement saying the attorney general’s office should not be used to protect Trump.
Delgado’s statement also said Congress “needs to pass bipartisan legislation to protect the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller from any outside or partisan interference.”