President Trump tweeted that he wished he had picked someone other than Attorney General Jeff Sessions to oversee the Justice Department, The Hill reports.
“I wish I did!” the president exclaimed in a tweet after quoting House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) saying the president “could have picked somebody else” to be the nation’s top cop.
New York Times: “The confrontation, which has not been previously reported, is being investigated by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as are the president’s public and private attacks on Mr. Sessions and efforts to get him to resign. Mr. Trump dwelled on the recusal for months, according to confidants and current and former administration officials who described his behavior toward the attorney general.”
“The special counsel’s interest demonstrates Mr. Sessions’s overlooked role as a key witness in the investigation into whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the inquiry itself. It also suggests that the obstruction investigation is broader than it is widely understood to be — encompassing not only the president’s interactions with and firing of the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, but also his relationship with Mr. Sessions.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) warned that he plans to urge lawmakers “this week” to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over classified materials related to the Russia investigation, CNN reports.
But the Justice Department informed Nunes three days ago — on the deadline for responding to a subpoena from Nunes’ committee — that providing the information on a “specific individual” could pose grave implications for national security.
It was not immediately clear why Nunes has targeted Sessions.
Rudy Giuliani told The Hill that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should intervene in the Michael Cohen case and put the people behind the probe “under investigation.”
Said Giuliani: “I am waiting for the Attorney General to step in, in his role as defender of justice, and put these people under investigation.”
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended his decision not to appoint a second special prosecutor to investigate Republicans’ concerns about the FBI by noting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe had already taken on “a life of its own,” Reuters reports.
Said Sessions: “I do not think we need to willy-nilly appoint special counsels. As we can see, it can really take on a life of its own.”
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided against recusing himself from the investigation into President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, but will consider stepping back from specific questions tied to the probe,” Bloomberg reports.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions “recently told the White House he might have to leave his job if President Trump fired his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” the Washington Post reports.
“Sessions made his position known in a phone call to White House counsel Donald McGahn last weekend, as Trump’s fury at Rosenstein peaked after the deputy attorney general approved the FBI’s raid April 9 on the president’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.”
New York Times: “Some close to the president believe he could try to replace Mr. Sessions with Mr. Giuliani in the coming months, although Mr. Giuliani would face an extremely difficult confirmation hearing in the Senate.”
“When Mr. Giuliani sought the secretary of state job, Trump advisers, including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, raised concerns about his business dealings and paid speeches to a shadowy Iranian opposition group that until 2012 was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.”
Wall Street Journal: “Two people who spoke to Mr. Trump during the week said they came away thinking both Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mr. Mueller, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions would soon be gone, potentially sparking a political and constitutional crisis.”
Said one: “It’s a matter of when, not if.”
“President Trump floated replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Scott Pruitt as recently as this week, even as the scandal-ridden head of the Environmental Protection Agency has faced a growing list of negative headlines,” CNN reports.
Said a source: “He was 100% still trying to protect Pruitt because Pruitt is his fill-in for Sessions.”
“Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI investigated Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year for misleading lawmakers about his contacts with Russians before eventually closing that part of the case,” Bloomberg reports.
Nearly a year before Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired senior FBI official Andrew McCabe for what Sessions called a “lack of candor,” McCabe oversaw a federal criminal investigation into whether Sessions lacked candor when testifying before Congress about contacts with Russian operatives, ABC News reports.
“Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly accused Sessions of misleading them in congressional testimony and called on federal authorities to investigate, but McCabe’s previously-unreported decision to actually put the attorney general in the crosshairs of an FBI probe was an exceptional move.”
President Trump’s aides “are watching for two key encounters this week to see if Attorney General Jeff Sessions has finally extricated himself from the danger of being fired, in part by ousting the former No. 2 official at the FBI,” Bloomberg reports.
“Trump and Sessions are scheduled to appear together on Monday for an event in New Hampshire on opioid addiction, although they flew there separately and some aides remained worried about how the president will treat Sessions in person. The two will also participate in a roundtable Tuesday at the White House on immigration, providing a fresh glimpse into their tense, and at times tumultuous, relationship.”
Sources tell Vanity Fair that President Trump has discussed a plan to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“According to two Republicans in regular contact with the White House, there have been talks that Trump could replace Sessions with E.P.A. Administrator Scott Pruitt, who would not be recused from overseeing the Russia probe. Also, because Pruitt is already a Cabinet secretary, he would not have to go through another Senate confirmation hearing.”
A great new book, Russian Roulette, reports that George Papadopoulos spent months “trying to set up a back channel between the campaign and the Kremlin, in part to arrange a Trump-Putin meeting before Election Day,” according to Mother Jones.
“According to a later court filing, Papadopoulos, who in October 2017 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, aimed to set up an ‘off the record’ meeting between campaign representatives and Putin’s office. Trump has famously denied there was any relationship between his campaign and Moscow. But Russian Roulette reveals that Papadopoulos has told investigators that at a March 31, 2016, meeting Trump held with his foreign policy team, when Papadopoulos informed Trump he had contacts in the United Kingdom who could set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, Trump said this was an ‘interesting’ idea. Trump, according to Papadopoulos’ account, looked at then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a top Trump adviser at the time, as if he expected him to follow up. Afterward, Papadopoulos, working with Russian cutouts, kept pursuing such a meeting.”
Jonathan Chait: “It would presumably be extremely difficult for the president to implant a loyalist into the position. Republicans have only 51 senators. Any two could join with Democrats to block an unacceptable successor, and there are a number of potential Republican senators — John McCain, Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Bob Corker, among others — who would be inclined to do so if Trump nominates the kind of AG he obviously craves.”
“But Trump might be able to fire Sessions and appoint a temporary replacement. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act allows the president to install, for 210 days, any official who has been confirmed by the Senate for any position. One name that has been floated for such a maneuver is Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt, who might have the requisite combination of personal corruption and ideological fanaticism to carry out Trump’s bidding.”
“An appointment of a Pruitt, or some other Senate-confirmed Trump loyalist, would only last for 210 days. But that might be long enough for a sufficiently craven attorney general to fire independent staff at the Department of Justice and the FBI and quash the Mueller probe.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said that he would not stick around and be President Trump’s “whipping boy” if he was in the position of his former colleague, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Birmingham News reports.
Said Shelby: “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t stay at all unless the president wanted me to stay… I wouldn’t be anybody’s whipping boy, I wouldn’t be belittled because the president is saying he doesn’t have any confidence in me.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions had dinner tonight with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Solicitor General Noel Francisco, Axios reports.
“The symbolism was unmistakable: the three top ranking officials in the Justice Department appearing together in a show of solidarity on the same day Trump is publicly and privately raging about Sessions.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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