President Donald Trump continues to attack Attorney General Jeff Sessions and allies of Sessions are not pleased, The Daily Caller has learned.
For the second time in a week Monday, Trump lashed out at the attorney general. “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?” Trump tweeted.
These comments came a week after the president told The New York Times that he wouldn’t have nominated Sessions to be the attorney general if he knew that Sessions would have recused himself from the investigation into Russian election interference.
“If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you,'” Trump said. “It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.”
Sessions recused himself from the investigation as it will touch into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and the attorney general was an adviser on the Trump campaign. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said after the Times interview that Trump has full confidence in Sessions and that if he wanted him to resign Trump “would make that quite clear.”
Hours after sending his tweet calling Sessions “beleaguered,” Trump was asked during a photo op with interns whether he wants Sessions to step down. The president didn’t reply, instead he rolled his eyes.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
TheDC spoke to multiple people close to Sessions Monday and all were dismayed with Trump’s behavior.
“It’s bullshit. Sessions is too good for our juvenile crybaby president,” one former senior Sessions aide in the Senate told TheDC. Another Sessions ally asked,”Beleaguered by who? By [Trump].”
This ally went on to say that it “seems like a really bad idea to push out this AG,” as Sessions is the “one that is implementing his agenda.”
The attorney general has indeed worked hard to implement the Trump agenda and has called for prosecutors to crack down on immigration offenses and rescinded an Obama-era directive that made it easier for drug offenders to escape prison time.
The Sessions ally told TheDC that Trump is “probably upset seeing his kids dragged into” the investigation, but noted that the attorney general has nothing to do with the probe as it is being run by special counsel Robert Mueller. Sessions said at a press conference last week after Trump’s comments to the Times that he intends to stay on the job, and the ally said this hasn’t changed. “He just intends to do his job and enforce the law,” the source noted.
Another Sessions ally said, “I am baffled. This doesn’t help the president, and is very unfair to Jeff.” This source also pointed to the possible repercussions from Trump’s comments in the state’s GOP primary.
“It also creates odd politics in Alabama where Jeff is loved, and it creates interesting dynamics in the Senate race where Mo Brooks has been outspoken in defending Jeff,” the Sessions ally told TheDC.
Polling from 2016 showed that 54 percent of Sessions’ constituents approved of the job he was doing.
A recent report from The New York Times noted how the Republican primary for Senate in Alabama is playing out to be a contest about who is closest to Trump, but will the candidates still side with the president against the state’s former senator?
