On Thursday, more clips from Donald Trump’s pow wow with Fox and Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt aired and at one point in the interview, the President took direct aim at Jeff Sessions and the Justice Department.
“Everybody sees what’s going on in the ‘Justice’ Department'”, Trump said, with emphasis on the word “justice”. “I always put the word ‘justice’ in quotes”, he added, before insisting that Sessions shouldn’t have recused himself.
“He took the job and then he said ‘I’m going to recuse myself'”, Trump continued, mocking Sessions’ southern drawl on the way to questioning the Attorney General’s integrity: “I said to myself ‘what kind of man is this?'”
As it turns out, Sessions is the “kind of man” who is only willing to go so far when it comes to enshrining himself in the history books as an accomplice to the growing list of crimes the President is likely to stand accused of at some point. According to many accounts, Sessions perjured himself on multiple occasions last year and his decision to bow to Trump and fire Andrew McCabe (who, by the way, oversaw a federal criminal investigation into Sessions last year) just days before his pension was set to vest, will go down as one of the more deplorable (pardon the pun) decisions in the history of the Department. So it’s not like Jeff hasn’t done his part – so to speak.
Sessions has also gone along with some of Trump’s cruel domestic agenda and in almost all cases, Jeff would be viewed as something of a villain. But somehow, Donald Trump has turned Sessions into a beacon of hope for the rule of law, a scenario that would be laughably far-fetched if you didn’t know who was President.
“I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in”, Sessions shot back on Thursday in response to Trump’s allegations. “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department will not be improperly influenced by political considerations”, he added, in a rare statement released as at least two key GOP lawmakers suggested Trump would likely fire Jeff after the midterms.
Amusingly, all of that took place just hours ahead of a meeting between the President and Sessions (among others), convened to discuss criminal justice reform. That must have been an awkward meeting.
“[There was] no acknowledgment, not even a passing mention” of the public spat, one source told Axios, adding that the silence was so deafening that you’d think Trump “wasn’t even aware of his [Sessions’] statement.”
Well, Trump is aware of it now, and he’s sarcastically using it to again insist that Sessions investigate his (Trump’s) political rivals.
“‘Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.’ Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants,” Trump quipped on Friday morning, before delivering the following set of what certainly look like demands that Sessions needs to meet if he wants to keep his job:
Look into all of the corruption on the “other side†including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr……FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!
So that’s just more obstruction of justice and just adds to what is likely an already voluminous body of evidence Mueller’s prosecutors will use when they eventually suggest the President has broken the law.
This is so wildly ridiculous that one struggles to understand how anyone could view it as anything other than what it is: the rantings of a paranoid and desperate man. But with Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley now apparently on board with firing Sessions, this Attorney General is toast.
Of course that will mean Trump making another enemy. One wonders whether leprechauns hold grudges.
