Donald Trump seems to have soured on the idea of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General according to an interview with The New York Times. Despite Sessions leading the way as one of the president’s strongest supporters during the campaign, it would seem that the decision by the Attorney General to recuse himself from the continuing Russia investigation has forced Trump to reconsider his decision. According to the Times interview, the president doesn’t think Sessions should have recused himself from the investigation and that he should’ve informed Trump of the decision before taking the job:
“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”
Trump also claimed that Sessions disappointed during his Senate hearing and “gave some bad answers.” The Times reached out to Sessions’ spokesman for a comment but received no reply.
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Trump also laid more criticism on fired FBI director James Comey during the interview, now claiming that Comey informed him of the “Golden Showers” dossier during a meeting with the president and intelligence leaders at Trump Tower before the inauguration. As Trump claims, the former FBI director did this to use the more salacious claims as leverage:
“In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Mr. Trump said. As leverage? “Yeah, I think so,’’ Mr. Trump said. “In retrospect.”
Comey and other intelligence officials confirmed this detail, noting that they pushed for Comey to meet with Trump alone because he was going to continue on as FBI director according to the Times, with Comey adding during his Congressional hearing that he shared the details of the dossier because he felt the media would be reporting the information and Trump had a right to know before then.
Trump fired Comey back in May and eventually sparked the need for a special prosecutor after the former FBI director shared memos of his one-on-one meetings with Trump with a friend to give to the media. The president still holds to the idea that Comey lied during his testimony, even telling the New York Times that it was a testimony “loaded up with lies.”
The president also criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller, alleging that the former FBI director had interviewed to replace Comey before threatening to drop future details:
“I said, ‘What the hell is this all about?’ Talk about conflicts. But he was interviewing for the job. There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”
As with anything with President Trump, truth and fiction blur together and the public is left guessing. The clear fact here is that the president is frustrated by several people around his administration, enough that he would talk to the New York Times candidly about them.
(Via New York Times)