Enemies list ‘pals’
Trump welcomes Sessions to growing club
PRESIDENT Trump’s list of enemies has grown so large that it now includes his friends.
The commander-in-chief called his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, “unfair” for recusing himself from the Russian meddling investigation — just part of a long list of complaints against people including fired FBI Director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller.
“How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ ” Trump told The New York Times.
“It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the President.” He added that Sessions, who reportedly suggested he could resign earlier this year, had given “bad answers” when he asked about contacts with Russian officials and did not mention meeting Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Revelations that the pair met led to the former Alabama senator, an early supporter of Trump, recusing himself from all Russian-related investigations.
Sessions’s spokesman declined to comment on The Times report Wednesday night.
The 50-minute interview saw Trump replay some of his greatest griping hits. He suggested that Comey was blackmailing him with an unconfirmed “dossier” of allegations against him. In January, Comey briefed the President on the documents compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, which included claims of collusion and sexual acts with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Trump told The Times. Trump’s subsequent firing of Comey accelerated the Russia investigation and led to the appointment of special counsel Mueller (photo inset), whose office Trump blasted for having “conflicts of interest.” The President generally chafed when asked about the Russia investigation during his Times interview, though he defended his G-20 meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He said that at their second dinner confab, undisclosed until Tuesday, they discussed “adoption,” presumably the Kremlin’s ban on Americans taking in Russian children.
Adoptions was the topic his son Donald Trump Jr. said he discussed with a Russian lawyer before revelations that their meeting was set up with the promise of information about Hillary Clinton.
Trump told The Times that he did not need any such information as “unless somebody said that she shot somebody in the back, there wasn’t much I could add to my repertoire.”
If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ PRESIDENT TRUMP