Trump calls on Sessions to stop Russia probe
WASHINGTON — President Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday to end the special counsel investigation, an extraordinary appeal to the nation’s top law enforcement official to end an inquiry directly into the president.
He wrote on Twitter: “This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”
The order immediately raised questions from some lawyers about whether it was an attempt to obstruct justice. The special counsel, appointed last year to oversee the government’s Russia investigation, is already looking into some of the president’s previous Twitter posts and public statements to determine whether they were intended to obstruct the inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any ties to the Trump campaign.
Trump’s lawyers quickly moved to contain the fallout, saying it was not an order to a member of his Cabinet, but merely an opinion. An hour and a half after the tweet was posted, Trump’s lawyers contacted a reporter for The New York Times. One of his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, dismissed the obstruction of justice concerns, calling it a “bizarre and novel theory of obstruction by tweet,” adding that it was “idiotic.”
Presidents typically do not weigh in on active Justice Department investigations, but Trump has been outspoken about his anger and frustration with the Russia inquiry. Trump has also said that he never would have made Sessions his attorney general if he had known Sessions would recuse himself from the inquiry.
Sessions recused himself in early 2017 in part to avoid the kind of conflicts Trump proposed. Later, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed to carry out the inquiry.
The president’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow and Giuliani, said that Trump was not ordering the inquiry closed but simply expressing his opinion.
“It’s not a call to action,” Giuliani said, adding that it was a sentiment that Trump and his lawyers had previously expressed publicly.
Urging Sessions to end the inquiry was unprecedented and amounted to Trump asking Sessions to “subvert the law,” said Matthew Axelrod, a longtime prosecutor who served in top roles in the Obama Justice Department.