Trump just seized the reins on the Mueller probe
He may, in the process, have insulated his son from an indictment.
By Philip Bump
November 7 at 4:00 PM
Few Cabinet members have had as contentious a relationship with the presidents they serve as did Jeff Sessions, attorney general until approximately 13 hours after the last polls closed in the 2018 midterm elections. Sessions endured President Trump’s frequent critiques on Twitter and was the target of Trump’s frustration both in interviews and in West Wing conversations that were later reported by the media.
The primary reason for Trump’s irritation was Sessions’s decision in March of last year to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. That recusal stemmed from a recommendation by Justice Department attorneys, who noted Sessions’s involvement in Trump’s 2016 campaign posed a potential conflict with an investigation into that campaign. For Trump, though, the recusal was a betrayal that left him exposed. Trump apparently hoped for an attorney general as loyal to his personal interests as Robert Kennedy was (per Trump’s assessment) when he served in his brother’s administration. Sessions should have told him he planned to recuse, Trump said on more than one occasion, and then Trump would not have picked him in the first place.
Sessions’s departure changes that calculus dramatically.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/07/trump-just-seized-reins-mueller-probe/?utm_term=.bf89e671d4b8
