President Donald Trump
President’s tweet chides Sessions as doubts cloud future
takes a remarkable new swipe at his own attorney general on Monday, referring to Jeff Sessions in a tweet as “beleaguered.”
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions faced increasing questions about his future as Monday began with a fresh public slap from President Donald Trump and continued with new calls to testify about his conversations with the Russian ambassador last year.
Sessions, the first senator to endorse Trump, was a strong influence during the campaign. A longtime advocate for reduced immigration, both legal and illegal, Sessions helped shape Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration policies.
He has also moved quickly to steer the Justice Department back to tough anti-crime and drug policies that Trump favors.
None of that seems to have saved him from the president’s ire.
Earlier this year, Sessions announced that he would step aside from overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and any possible cooperation by people associated with the Trump campaign.
Sessions acted on advice from the department’s ethics lawyers, who said he should not play a role in an investigation involving a campaign on which he worked.
But in a startling interview with The New York Times last week, Trump said Sessions’ decision to recuse was “very unfair to the president,” and he made it clear that he blamed Sessions for the widening special counsel investigation he now faces.
Since then, things appear to have gotten worse for the attorney general.
On Monday morning, Trump tweeted that Sessions was “beleaguered” and questioned why the Justice Department wasn’t doing more to investigate Hillary Clinton’s dealings with Russia.
Later in the day, Trump’s new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, did nothing to allay doubts about Sessions’ future, refusing to say in an interview whether Trump wanted him to resign.
“They need to sit down face to face and have a reconciliation and a discussion of the future,” he said in an interview with CNN. “They need to speak and determine what the future of the relationship looks like.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also offered no reassurances.
“I think the president has been extremely clear about his position,” she told reporters. “He’s very disappointed that Attorney General Sessions chose to recuse himself.”
Last week, Sessions said he had no plans to step down, saying he loved his job and would stay as long as it was “appropriate.”
“I’m totally confident we can continue to run this office in an effective way,” he said.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said Monday that hasn’t changed. She had no comment on Scaramucci’s interview or on Trump’s “beleaguered” comment.
The situation has begun to draw criticism from some Republicans, who say Trump should take Sessions to the woodshed in private.
“To do this in public is what I don’t understand,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.
Some conservative admirers of Sessions have also come to his defense, which might make Trump reluctant to actually fire the attorney general.
Another consideration for Trump is that a new nominee to head the Justice Department might have difficulty winning confirmation, especially if GOP senators demanded assurances that the nominee would not move against the special counsel, Robert Mueller.
Sessions visited the White House on Monday, sparking a quick flurry of speculation that he was about to resign or be fired.
But Flores said Sessions was there for a standing Monday lunch meeting with White House Counsel Donald McGahn. The attorney general had a discussion with McGahn and Tom Price, the Health and Human Services secretary, she said.
She and Sanders both said Sessions did not see Trump.
No meeting with the president has been scheduled, Flores said.
The two apparently have not spoken since Trump’s interview became public last Wednesday.
Responding to a shouted question about Sessions at a photo opportunity on Monday, Trump smirked and rolled his eyes.
Also on Monday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Sessions needs to appear before the committee to answer new questions about his contacts with the former Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
The Washington Post reported last Friday that intelligence agencies had overheard Kislyak reporting to associates in Russia that he and Sessions had substantive conversations about campaign-related issues, contradicting Sessions’ descriptions of their conversations as casual and incidental to the campaign.
In a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee chairman, Feinstein said it would be “a grave breach of trust” if Sessions gave misleading information in his written answers.