TRUMP IN PALM BEACH:
2017 Mar-a-Lago meeting with Sessions a pivotal point.
President Donald Trump ramped
PALM BEACH — up the pressure on Attorney Jeff General Sessions via Twitter Wednesday, saying he regrets choosing the former U.S. senator from Alabama for the post.
The statement was issued in a trio of morning missives by Trump. The tweets quoted comments from U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R- S.C., who said on a CBS morning show that the president chose Sessions over “lots of really good lawyers in the country” and could have picked any of them. Trump added: “And I wish I did!”
The tweets followed reports a day before by The New York Times that Trump “berated” Sessions during a visit to Mar-a-Lago in March 2017. The cause? Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the federal government’s investigation into allegations Russian entities interfered in the 2016 presidential election to assist
Trump’s campaign.
The Times reported that Trump demanded Sessions reverse his decision. Sessions refused.
Sessions’ recusal on March 2, 2017, from “any existing or future investigations of any matter” related to Russia and the presidential campaign angered Trump at the time. And it has remained a volatile point in the relationship between the president and the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Sessions has since been broadsided by other Trump tweets and reports that the president sought his resignation.
Sessions’ recusal set off a chain of events that culminated in the firing of FBI director James Comey two months later and the subsequent of appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A year later, Mueller’s probe continues into both allegations that Russians meddled in the election to boost Trump’s campaign and the president’s potential obstruction of justice in the firing of Comey.
Trump has maintained there was “no collusion” with Russia and has called the investigation a “witch hunt” in numerous statements and tweets during the past 15 months. But the investigations into his administration have widened with the revelation the president’s attorney, Michael Cohen, paid a porn actress $130,000 to stay quiet on her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump more than decade ago.
A critical pivot in all of this turned out to be the evening of March 4, 2017, which found Sessions and two other Cabinet members at Mar-a-Lago. The group included Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, a Palm Beach neighbor of Trump, and Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s White House chief of staff who at the time served as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Also at Mar-a-Lago that night were some 300 guests mingling with donors and doctors from Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. They were attending Bascom Palmer’s Japan-themed fundraising gala, sipping champagne and admiring the cherry blossoms and hydrangeas that decorated the tables in the grand ballroom, the very one where Donald Trump and wife Melania had celebrated their 2005 wedding.
In Mar-a-Lago’s grand salon, adorned with tapestries on walls, Sessions was all smiles as he greeted the gala’s attendees. Signs posted throughout Mar-aLago warned that photographs were not permitted, but Sessions posed for pictures with some Bascom Palmer donors attending the institute’s Evening of Vision gala. He also shook hands with several guests.
New York Times reports from March 2017
benefit at Mar-a-Lago
Sessions was in Mar-aLago’s ocean-to-lake compound, which Trump had started to call the “Southern White House,” ostensibly to discuss the administration’s controversial immigration travel ban. The agenda soon was dominated by another item — the attorney general’s recusal.
The recusal stemmed from Sessions’ misleading comments to Congress. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Sessions failed to disclose that he had twice spoken to Russian officials, in particular Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Comments Trump had tried to explain as a simple misunderstanding in a series of tweets on March 2, 2017.
The president was much more blunt with Sessions at Mar-a-Lago that Saturday evening, The Times reported this week, saying “Trump brought up the Russia investigation with Sessions and asked him to change his mind about stepping aside,” citing people with knowledge of the confrontation.
Ironically, as The Palm Beach Post reported at the time, the Sessions recusal and the deepening Russia election scandal were also a topic of conversation at the Bascom Palmer philanthropic gala.
Bascom Palmer guests, mostly donors who had used the services of the renowned eye institute, speculated about the presence of Sessions at the Trump estate. Despite the smiles and the diamonds and the glamorous ballgowns, several said they were uneasy about reports of Trump campaign ties to Russia.
“It appalls me, the situation we’re in right now,” said one guest who asked not to be identified but described himself as a conservative Republican.
But other guests, including Heidi Klein of Boca Raton, were unmoved by any controversy. She praised Mar-aLago as the best venue for charity events: “It’s absolutely special... There’s no other place like it.”
Some of the guests openly speculated whether damage-control talks over Sessions’ recusal had kept Trump from making the customary visit to the ballroom.
Later, Trump appeared on the canopied walkway outside the ballroom. Sessions was not with him.
‘Trump brought up the Russia investigation with Sessions and asked him to change his mind about stepping aside.’