Trump’s attacks could doom Sessions
President undercuts attorney general in public pillories
In five months as attorney general, Jeff Sessions has pursued the staunchly conservative agenda Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail.
He has refocused the nation’s attention on violent crime; ordered a sweeping review of police agreements that punished troubled agencies; threatened so-called sanctuary cities for harboring undocumented immigrants; and rolled back a series of Obama-era civil rights actions, including a Justice Department challenge to a controversial voter identification law in Texas.
Sessions has done virtually everything Trump wanted, except to protect the boss from an expanding investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in last year’s election.
Days after announcing that he would not have nominated Sessions to be the country’s chief law enforcement official had he known the attorney general would recuse himself from the Russia inquiry, Trump further isolated Sessions on Monday, describing him as “beleaguered” and questioning why he was not pursuing an investigation into former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The president’s public condemnations of the attorney general, analysts said, raise questions about whether Ses-
sions will be able to serve. “He’s in no-man’s land right now,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller, who served in the Obama administration. “I don’t see how he can continue. He is certainly weakened, and it would be hard to work on policy matters with the White House if the president doesn’t have confidence in you.”
Trump’s willingness to undercut one of his earliest and most faithful supporters — even at the possible expense of his law enforcement priorities — may mean he’s motivated by more than disappointment in a decision his attorney general made back in March. The president, analysts said, may be trying to squeeze Sessions as part of a broader strategy to take more control over the direction of the Russia inquiry.
“I think you have to ask the question of who benefits from Sessions’ removal,” said Jimmy Gurule, a former assistant attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. “And the answer is President Trump.”
Sessions’ removal, Gurule said, would allow Trump to pick an attorney general nominee with no conflicts with the Russia inquiry, which prompted Sessions’ recusal. A new attorney general could wrest control of the investigation from special counsel Robert Mueller, who leads the Justice Department’s inquiry into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russians who sought to influence the presidential election in favor of Trump by hacking Democrats. By law, Trump cannot directly fire Mueller.
“Given President Trump’s stated concerns for the direction of Mueller’s investigation (to include the Trump family finances), you have to look at Sessions’ removal as part of an end game,” Gurule said.
Trump’s high-profile attacks on Sessions came after news that
Mueller is investigating a controversial meeting in June 2016 between a Kremlin-linked lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., son-inlaw Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Justice officials declined to comment Monday on Trump’s latest missive. It was not immediately clear whether Sessions had communicated directly with the president since Trump expressed his displeasure last week in an interview with The New York Times.
The day after the interview was published, Sessions said he would continue to serve, as long as it was “appropriate.” The White House said Trump had confidence in his attorney general even though he disagreed with the decision to recuse himself on the Russia investigation.
The political fire has intensified since. John Dowd, Trump’s lead outside attorney handling Russia matters, said the president’s criticism of Sessions is justified. “I’m ashamed of him (Sessions),” Dowd said in an interview with USA TODAY, adding that the attorney general’s recusal decision was “nuts.”
Whatever the president’s intention, analysts said, Trump’s criticism severely damaged Sessions’ ability to lead a department whose mission is critical to carrying out Trump’s agenda — from immigration enforcement to the campaigns against violent crime and opioid addiction.
“Anybody who works for Donald Trump has a very difficult, if not an impossible, task,” said Bill Baxley, a former Alabama attorney general who knows Sessions from his time in Alabama. “I think his criticisms are unjustified, but it is not surprising that (Trump) acts like that.”