Sessions: Despite Trump’s ‘hurtful’ words, I’ll stay on
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s scathing criticisms have been “kind of hurtful,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday, even as he again signaled that he wants to stay on the job.
“He wants all of us to do our job, and that’s what I intend to do,” Sessions said in an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News. The network released an excerpt in advance of the scheduled air time Thursday night.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Sessions said he will stay in the job for as long as Trump wants him to serve.
Sessions said that he and the president “have a harmony of values and beliefs,” and that he wants to stay and fight for the president’s agenda “as long as he sees that as appropriate.”
The comments were the first this week on the subject from Sessions, who has been subjected to harshly critical tweets from Trump for three days. The president has called him “weak” and said he wasn’t aggressive enough in going after leakers.
Trump has criticized Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into the Kremlin’s election meddling after he admitted to meeting with Russia’s ambassador during the campaign.
Last week, after Trump criticized Sessions in a New York Times interview, Sessions told reporters he planned to stay on as long as it was “appropriate.”
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were taking steps Thursday to show support for Sessions, a former senator.
Warning of “holy hell” to pay if the president fires the attorney general, a top Senate Republican is working to prevent the potential end result, the dismissal of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is working on legislation that would block the firing of special counsels without judicial review. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday they are among the members on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are working with Graham on the effort.
Despite a drumbeat of criticism from Trump, congressional Republicans have expressed strong support for former FBI Director Mueller, who was appointed earlier this year to investigate allegations of Russian meddling in the election and possible links to the Trump campaign.
Graham and Whitehouse lead the Judiciary panel’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism and have been investigating the Russian meddling along with the committee’s chairman, Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley. A Graham spokesman says the senator’s still working on the bill, and it’s unclear when it will be introduced.
Graham has sternly warned Trump not to fire Mueller or Sessions. He said Thursday, “If Jeff Sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay.”
Sessions has seemed to redouble his attempts this week to win back the president’s favor. He announced another crackdown on socalled sanctuary cities that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement and on Thursday traveled to El Salvador to highlight arrests of MS-13 gang members, both favorite topics of the president.
The Justice Department also plans to address leaks next week.
On Wednesday evening, after Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s incoming communications director, falsely tweeted that he’d been the victim of a leak because his publicly available financial disclosure forms were published, Sessions’ chief spokeswoman released a statement agreeing promising to “aggressively pursue leak cases wherever they may lead.”
In the Fox interview, Sessions reached back to Trump’s campaign slogan to praise the president as a “strong leader.”
“He is determined to move this country in the direction that he believes it needs to go to make it great again,” he said.