Seized by paroxysms of anger
Politico reports that Trump is getting closer to firing Sessions; the resistance of Republican senators is weakening.
The willingness of Republican senators to turn on Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the result of a furious lobbying campaign from President Donald Trump, who for the past 10 days has been venting his anger at Sessions to “any senator who will listen,” as one GOP Senate aide put it.
And not just senators.
He’s worn down his lawyers, too, according to two Republicans close to the White House. Though they once cautioned him that dismissing Sessions would feed special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s potential obstruction of justice, these people say, Trump’s legal team has become increasingly convinced Mueller will make that case regardless of whether the president fires Sessions or leaves him in place.
So might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb? Ok.
“There’s the belief that if the president taking action with respect to Sessions is going to be an important part of the Mueller obstruction case, most of that case has already been made. Things that the president has already done privately that have been reported, but also things that the president has done publicly that could be characterized as bullying or intimidating, all of that case is already there ready to be made, such that firing him is almost like an afterthought,” said one person familiar with the conversations among members of the president’s legal team.
He’s already screwed himself so it won’t matter if he adds another turn.
Seized by paroxysms of anger, Trump has intermittently pushed to fire his attorney general since March 2017, when Sessions announced his recusal from the Russia investigation. If Sessions’ recusal was his original sin, Trump has come to resent him for other reasons, griping to aides and lawmakers that the attorney general doesn’t have the Ivy League pedigree the president prefers, that he can’t stand his Southern accent, and that Sessions isn’t a capable defender of the president on television — in part because he “talks like he has marbles in his mouth,” the president has told aides.
Oh gawd – has Trump ever looked at his own performance? He’s not what you’d call a skilled speaker.
The drumbeat of presidential tweets denigrating Sessions as “weak” and calling on him to “stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now” have also shaped the view among the president’s legal team. They have come to believe that if Mueller wants to build a case that the president has intimidated his attorney general, he can do so given the voluminous public record created by the president — and that firing Sessions won’t change much.
It would be funny if it weren’t so disgusting – Trump has already made it so obvious that he’s doing everything he can to obstruct justice that there’s really no point in trying to prevent him from doing more. That ship has sailed.
And more, firing Sessions may possibly lead to the investigation being shut down, watered down or so compromised that he largely gets away without legal consequences. Especially if he has a complicit Congress and Senate.
For an added layer of irony, from what I hear, Sessions’ decisions to recuse himself is possibly the only principled thing he’s done in his life.
I’ve speculated to myself that Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation because he knows ways that Trump is compromised or dirty (with respect to Russia, or financially in general) and Sessions wanted to protect himself from his knowledge of that while staying in his job to advance white Christian nationalism. I assume an Attorney General would have a TS/SCI clearance and could know intelligence about Trump, international money laundering, etc.