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Trump, Undeterred by Sessions’s Rebuke, Urges Him to Examine Corruption on the ‘Other Side’ Trump Boosts Ohio Republicans, Minus His Usual Swagger
(about 11 hours later)
WASHINGTON Undeterred by his attorney general’s pledge to keep politics out of the Justice Department, President Trump again attacked Jeff Sessions on Friday, urging him to look into “corruption” on the “other side” and offering a list of highly partisan issues. COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Trump, closing out a brutal week that plunged him deeper into legal and political peril, warned Ohio Republicans on Friday that Democrats would destroy their state and impose policies that would spill “innocent blood” if they were successful in November.
The fresh jabs launched at Mr. Sessions in early morning Twitter posts came after an evening of what appeared to be restraint. Mr. Trump wanted to rebut Mr. Sessions’s comments on Thursday on Twitter, but his advisers stopped him, according to people briefed on the matter. While presenting himself as the savior of the party’s fortunes in a highly competitive state, Mr. Trump displayed little of his trademark swagger. Appearing subdued and distracted, he played up the strong economy and his trade policies, and charged without evidence that Democrats were putting the interests of undocumented immigrants before those of American citizens.
Mr. Sessions on Thursday issued a rare public statement defending his record as attorney general and pledging his commitment to justice after the president accused him of never taking control of the department. “Their whole campaign is ‘resist,’” Mr. Trump said inside a cavernous banquet hall here where the Ohio Republican Party was holding its annual banquet, adding, “they still haven’t figured out they lost the election, but they’re going to figure it out soon.”
“Jeff Sessions never took control of the Justice Department and it’s a sort of an incredible thing,” Mr. Trump said during a recent interview with Fox News. “Democrat immigration policies are destroying innocent lives and spilling very innocent blood,” he added. “We believe that any party that puts criminal aliens before American citizens should be voted out of office.”
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Sessions hit back. “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in,” he said in a written statement. After a week that brought the criminal conviction of his former campaign chairman; a guilty plea from his longtime lawyer, who implicated him in campaign finance crimes; and a grant of immunity to a top executive in his real estate empire, Mr. Trump alluded only glancingly to the scandals swirling around him.
The sparring match between the president and the attorney general extended 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 into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But even as he argued that the strength of the economy under his leadership should be enough to buoy Republicans in the coming contests, Mr. Trump was less bullish about his party’s chances than he has been in the past.
Mr. Sessions’s response on Thursday, 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. “They keep saying that whoever is president, they don’t win the midterms I just don’t get it but no president has ever had this economy,” Mr. Trump said, expressing confidence about preserving the Republican majority in the Senate. “The House is probably tougher. We have so many people running.” (It was not entirely clear what Mr. Trump meant; unlike the Senate, which has six-year terms, House seats turn over every two years, meaning that all 435 are contested.)
Mr. Trump blames the Justice Department for the investigations that ensnared his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and longtime lawyer and fixer Michael D. Cohen. On Tuesday, Mr. Manafort was convicted and Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government, among other charges. Mr. Trump won Ohio in 2016, but a recent special election here underscored Republican concerns about the midterm elections this fall, demonstrating both the president’s ability to energize the party’s core supporters, and the ways in which his polarizing brand of politics has left some members of his party vulnerable. Troy Balderson, a state senator, eked out a narrow victory in what was once considered a reliably Republican district in the Columbus suburbs, after Mr. Trump had endorsed 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. “You would have made me look bad if you hadn’t pulled that out,” Mr. Trump quipped during his speech.
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?’ Governor John Kasich, the state’s Republican governor and an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, skipped the dinner, highlighting divisions in the party over the president’s leadership.
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. Matt Borges, an ally of Mr. Kasich’s whom Mr. Trump helped to force out as chairman of the state’s party, said that the president’s divisive messaging on issues like immigration was driving up the enthusiasm of Democrats in a way that could spell peril for Republican candidates in November.
“Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the ‘other side,’” Mr. Trump wrote in a pair of Twitter posts early Friday morning. “Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!” “His constant desire to polarize the electorate whether it be polarized Democrats or polarized Republicans who just aren’t comfortable with the president could be a dangerous strategy,” Mr. Borges said. “He’s goading the other side he does it all the time so what we have now is an electorate where the people who don’t like him are maxed out, and the question is whether that sort of rhetoric really helps energize Republicans to vote.”
Mr. Trump listed people and political enemies who he believes deserve the attention of the Justice Department, including the targets of conservative conspiracy theories that claim the Russia investigation was motivated by politics. “So far, it has succeeded,” Mr. Borges added of Mr. Trump’s approach. “But I just think it could be playing with fire.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill on Thursday 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. During the dinner, Mr. Trump stoked the themes of cultural division that he has made his trademarks. He lashed out at the N.F.L., as well as the television networks ESPN and CBS, for their handling of the controversy over football players kneeling in protest during the national anthem.
“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. He falsely accused journalists of ceasing to cover the death of Mollie Tibbetts, a young woman killed in Iowa, after they discovered that the suspect in her killing was an undocumented immigrant.
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. And he claimed that Americans had refrained from saying “Merry Christmas” before his election, but were doing so now, and “proud of it.”
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 praised Representative James B. Renacci, a Republican, who is running to unseat the state’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, calling Mr. Brown “a very liberal Democrat.” But he saved his most savage words for Richard Cordray, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who is the Democratic candidate for governor, calling him a “bad guy” who was “destroying a lot of people’s lives.”
“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. “He’ll destroy your state Cordray will destroy your state,” Mr. Trump said, offering to share disparaging information about Mr. Cordray with Republicans seeking to defeat him. “Call my office. I have so much information.”
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. At times, though, Mr. Trump appeared to wander off his campaign-themed script and toward venting his frustrations about the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections, and whether his campaign played a role.
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. “It’s always negative, nasty the way they come after me,” Mr. Trump said of Democrats. “Nobody looks at them. Is that ‘deep state,’ or what?”
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. He began to reel off the names of his perceived enemies.
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. “McCabe, you have the beautiful Lisa Page and her wonderful F.B.I. agent how about him?” Mr. Trump said as diners, seated at round tables in a hall lit with red, white and blue lighting, looked on silently.
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. He was referring to Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy director of the F.B.I.; Ms. Page, a former lawyer for the bureau; and indirectly to Peter Strzok, an F.B.I. agent who exchanged texts with Ms. Page that were highly critical of the president.
All have since left the bureau.
“Comey lies and leaks — he’s a liar and he’s a leaker,” Mr. Trump added, referring to the F.B.I. director he fired, James B. Comey. “Is this guy being looked at? It’s the most incredible thing people have ever seen.”
Even as he bragged about his record and made a final plea to residents to turn out to carry Republicans to victory in the fall, Mr. Trump appeared preoccupied with the cascade of crises in which he has found himself.
“We’re bringing it all back,” the president said. “It’s all happening, folks. It’s happening faster than people understand.”
Then, he added: “There’s been a lot of craziness.”