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Jeff Sessions Rejects Trump’s Attack, Saying Justice Dept. Will Not Be Influenced by Politics Trump Denounces Justice Dept. as Investigations Swirl Around Him
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against President Trump’s recent attack on him — namely that Mr. Sessions never took control of the Justice Department — and said on Thursday that he would not be influenced by politics in the job. WASHINGTON — President Trump blamed the Justice Department on Thursday for the investigations surrounding him, criticized the deal struck with his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen and lashed out at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who countered with a rare public rebuke of the president.
“While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” Mr. Sessions said in a rare public statement. Mr. Trump also praised Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager who was convicted of financial fraud this week, for refusing to cooperate with the Justice Department and said that plea agreements, an essential tool for prosecutors, should maybe be outlawed.
The president has long expressed regret over naming Mr. Sessions to be attorney general because he suggested Mr. Sessions failed to protect him by recusing himself from the government’s continuing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and any possible coordination with members of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal,” Mr. Trump said in an interview that aired on Fox News.
“I put in an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with “Fox & Friends” recorded on Wednesday and aired on Thursday morning. “Jeff Sessions never took control of the Justice Department and it’s a sort of an incredible thing.” Asked whether he was considering firing Mr. Sessions, the president only reiterated his longstanding objection to Mr. Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation and his insistence that he would have chosen another person for attorney general had he known someone else would oversee the inquiry. “He took the job and then he said, ‘I’m going to recuse myself,’” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Sessions. “I said, ‘What kind of a man is this?’”
The president later asked: “What kind of man is this.” In an implicit but pointed reply, Mr. Sessions warned the president not to intrude on federal law enforcement. “While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” he said in a statement issued shortly before he met with Mr. Trump at the White House about criminal justice overhaul.
Mr. Sessions appeared to answer that question: “I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action,” he said in the statement. The exchange escalated the public war that Mr. Trump has waged for more than a year on the Justice Department, training most of his fire on the special counsel investigation. Mr. Sessions’s response, his most forceful public pushback yet on Mr. Trump, showed the treacherous political terrain he is navigating: appointed by a president who has made apparent that he views law enforcement as loyal protectors but overseeing a Justice Department that views independence from political pressure as essential to the rule of law.
Mr. Trump said the only reason he gave Mr. Sessions the job was because he had been an early prominent supporter of his presidential campaign. “I felt loyalty,” Mr. Trump said. Their exchange also came on a day of potentially damaging revelations for the president about the special counsel and Cohen inquiries. A longtime friend and the publisher of The National Enquirer, David J. Pecker, was given immunity to detail Mr. Cohen’s crimes and Mr. Trump’s role, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed. Mr. Trump’s lawyers also revealed that they warned him against even considering pardons for Mr. Manafort or other former aides, at least for now, opening Mr. Trump to accusations of tampering.
If the battle lines were not previously drawn, they were now. Republicans on Capitol Hill stood firm behind Mr. Sessions, who spent two decades as a senator, publicly cautioning Mr. Trump against firing him. They cited a packed calendar and a lack of confirmable replacements for a closely divided Senate where Democrats are watching vigilantly for any moves by the president that could undermine the Russia investigation.
Mr. Sessions stated his unwavering commitment to nation’s laws and his support for the federal investigators and prosecutors who enforce them. By contrast, Mr. Trump expressed what he found most valuable — loyalty — and how he thought one of the key tools for law enforcement, “flipping” and cooperating with federal prosecutors, “almost ought to be outlawed.” “We don’t have time, nor is there a likely candidate who could get confirmed, in my view, under the current circumstances,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a key Republican swing vote, warned that removing Mr. Sessions because of his recusal from the Russia investigation “certainly would not be a wise move.” A spokesman for the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he was not aware of any change in the leader’s support for Mr. Sessions.
Mr. Trump’s response this week to learning that two of his former aides were guilty of defrauding the federal government has helped paint a picture of his views on law and loyalty. One aide, his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of tax and bank fraud on Tuesday. Mr. Trump said he was “brave,” because he chose to go to trial instead of cooperating with the government. And the other aide, the president’s longtime personal attorney Michael D. Cohen, who was once so loyal to the president that he said he would take a bullet for him, was in Mr. Trump’s view a bad lawyer who broke under pressure. But there were signs of softening, too, mainly from Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the head of the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Grassley has warred with Mr. Sessions over one of his top policy priorities, a comprehensive bipartisan criminal justice overhaul also championed by the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Mr. Grassley has said he believes that Mr. Sessions has led opposition within the administration to the legislative package.
“It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Cohen’s deal with the government. Mr. Trump said the campaign finance crimes Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to were “tiny ones,” or “not even crimes.” During Thursday’s meeting at the White House, the president held off on backing the proposal at least until after November’s midterm elections, concluding that an endorsement now carried too much political risk, according to a senior White House official who was not authorized to disclose the private discussions and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Trump said the years in prison that Mr. Cohen faces were too daunting, and “in all fairness to him, most people are going to” take a plea bargain. Mr. Trump added, “I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff.” “The president remains committed to meaningful prison reform and will continue working with the Senate on their proposed additions to the bill,” Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
One of Mr. Trump’s longtime friends, David J. Pecker, was given immunity by federal prosecutors in exchange for providing information about Mr. Cohen’s campaign finance crimes and Mr. Trump’s role in them, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed on Thursday. Mr. Trump’s decision notably aligned him with Mr. Sessions, at least in the short term, and Mr. Grassley signaled his displeasure with the attorney general’s interference by suggesting he would be open to confirming a possible replacement for him. “I’ve got time for hearings this fall,” he told reporters. He had protected Mr. Sessions last year amid rumors of his firing by saying that the Senate would not make room for confirmation hearings for a new attorney general.
Flipping, or striking a plea bargain with prosecutors, is one of the most commonly used tactics in the federal justice system. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, also hedged his support for Mr. Sessions, noting that it was obvious Mr. Sessions had lost the president’s confidence and that he did not necessarily object to Mr. Trump replacing him under the right circumstances after the midterm elections. Mr. Graham had previously said that Mr. Trump would have “holy hell to pay” if he fired Mr. Sessions.
Matt Axelrod, a former federal prosecutor who is currently practicing as a white collar defense attorney at Linklaters Law Firm, called it a “fundamental building block” of federal prosecutions. Mr. Trump, who tends to be far less confrontational with perceived foes in private settings, was cordial with Mr. Sessions at their meeting on criminal justice overhaul. Neither man brought up their barbed exchange, according to two senior administration officials who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
“Prosecutors use cooperators to work their way up the organizational hierarchy,” Mr. Axelrod said. “Without cooperators, prosecutors are often left with a case against just the worker bees, not the bosses.” Mr. Sessions followed the president’s lead in the meeting, the officials said. The two agreed on several points made by advisers on prison reform. For example, if the legislation moves forward, both men agreed that they would want to increase the sentencing penalty for drug cases that involve fentanyl. In the past, both have recommended putting some drug dealers to death.
Or, as Mr. Trump said, “They flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go.” After the meeting, Mr. Kushner sped to Capitol Hill to meet with Mr. Grassley, Mr. McConnell and Mr. Cornyn to try to find a path forward for the legislation.
Mr. Trump, who had been relatively subdued in the day or so after Mr. Cohen’s and Mr. Manafort’s convictions, had grown enraged by Wednesday night, according to people who spoke to him.
The president privately vented to associates that he was furious with Mr. Sessions for failing to protect him in the way he believes Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had protected President Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump wanted to rebut the Mr. Sessions’s statement on Thursday on Twitter, but his advisers stopped him, according to people briefed on the matter, at least into the evening.
He also complained during his Fox interview that the campaign finance crimes Mr. Cohen admitted committing at his direction were “tiny ones,” or “not even crimes.”
But he appeared to chiefly blame Mr. Sessions for his legal woes. “I put in an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department,” Mr. Trump said. “Jeff Sessions never took control of the Justice Department and it’s a sort of an incredible thing.”
The president’s comments showed that his feud with federal law enforcement has taken on a new urgency.
“What is different now is that the Justice Department noose is tightening around the president’s neck,” said Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush. “That context makes this confrontation more significant, for it might indicate that the president is finally going to follow through on his threats and insinuations, over many months, about firing Justice Department officials or taking other actions against the Mueller investigation.”
Mr. Grassley also reached out on Thursday to lawyers representing Mr. Cohen, inviting him to testify privately before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans on the panel have led an intermittent investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia but have not sought new witness testimony in months.