03-05-2020, 12:03 AM
Quote:President Donald Trump reacted to Jeff Sessions’s so-so primary showing in his quest to regain his old Alabama US Senate seat by taking yet another shot at his former attorney general. But in the process of doing so, Trump confirmed one of the Mueller report’s key findings about his efforts to obstruct justice. On Wednesday morning, Trump quote-tweeted a post from Politico about Sessions’s second-place finish in Tuesday’s Republican primary — one that will result in a runoff next month between Sessions and first-place finisher Tommy Tuberville — and wrote, “This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins!”Trump blasts Sessions on Twitter, inadvertently confirming key Mueller finding - Vox
Trump’s tweet is factually incorrect. Sessions actually served as attorney general for about three weeks before he recused himself from the Russia probe on March 2, 2017, on the heels of revelations that he had misled senators during his confirmation hearing about the extent of his communications with Russians in 2016. But more significant than that fib is the broader point Trump communicated: that Sessions should have quickly shut down the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia instead of recusing himself. Here’s the thing: The president isn’t supposed to direct the attorney general to end specific investigations, especially ones directly involving his campaign. In fact, the perception that Trump had interfered in the Russia investigation (by firing then-FBI Director James Comey two months after Sessions’s recusal) led to special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment in the first place.
As part of his investigation, Mueller investigated 10 instances where Trump potentially committed obstruction of justice. A number of them involved Trump’s repeated efforts to cajole Sessions into either limiting the investigation or unrecusing himself and ending it. As Marshall Cohen of CNN noted, the evidence Mueller laid out indicated that Trump’s conduct met all the criteria for an obstruction of justice charge. But Mueller ultimately determined that because of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel’s 2000 opinion that the department can’t indict a sitting president, charging Trump with crimes while he’s still in office wasn’t an option for him.
Wednesday’s tweet is not the first time Trump has basically publicly admitted that he asked Sessions to end the Russia investigation. He posted a tweet that was even more direct about that demand in August 2018, one day after the trial of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort began on a host of charges related to financial crimes and money laundering that stemmed from the Mueller investigation. This was also back when Sessions was still serving as AG (Sessions resigned under pressure three months later and was replaced by William Barr).