President Donald Trump has delivered his greatest attack against Attorney General Jeff Sessions ever.
“I don’t have an Attorney General. It’s very sad,” the president told the right wing news outlet The Hill.
Trump has promised to not fire Sessions before the midterms, but it is widely expected the attorney general will be gone immediately after the November vote.
President Trump spent 45 minutes with two media personalities from The Hill, and appeared to be laying the groundwork for firing Sessions in what was described as a “freewheeling” interview.
“I’m not happy at the border, I’m not happy with numerous things, not just this,” Trump told them.
But true to form the president also lied.
“He gets in and probably because of the experience that he had going through the nominating when somebody asked him the first question about Hillary Clinton or something he said ‘I recuse myself, I recuse myself,’” Trump said.
“And now it turned out he didn’t have to recuse himself. Actually, the FBI reported shortly thereafter any reason for him to recuse himself. And it’s very sad what happened.”
Actually, Attorney General Sessions was legally required to recuse himself. Dept. of Justice regulations required it.
Despite that, Trump repeatedly claimed that Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation and anything campaign related is very “unfair” to him. The president sees the Attorney General’s role as existing to protect him, which he falsely has claimed Eric Holder did for President Obama.
And while it’s not a question of if but when Trump will fire Sessions, he would not admit it, nor would he offer any timeline.
“We’ll see what happens. A lot of people have asked me to do that,” Trump said of firing the Attorney General. “And I guess I study history, and I say I just want to leave things alone, but it was very unfair what he did.”
“And my worst enemies, I mean, people that, you know, are on the other side of me, in a lot of ways including politically, have said that was a very unfair thing he did.”
Trump did not specify who he thinks believe following the law and DOJ regulations is “unfair.”
“We’ll see how it goes with Jeff. I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed.”