When stories about you offering to resign due to increasingly strained relations with your boss are the high point of your week, you know it’s not been a good seven days.
That’s how it went for Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week.
Things started off poorly when a series of pieces detailed his ongoing issues with President Donald Trump. This, from CNN’s Sara Murray and Stephen Collinson, paints an ugly picture for Sessions:
“Sessions and the President have had a series of heated exchanges in recent weeks, prompted by the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from the probe into Russia interference in the election and alleged collusion by Trump aides, a source close to Sessions told CNN on Tuesday.”
“At one point, Sessions made clear he would be willing to resign if Trump no longer wanted him.”
Trump doesn’t like to ever apologize, retreat or concede. On anything. Sessions did just that, in Trump’s eyes, when he recused himself from the federal Russia probe after it was revealed he had not disclosed two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 campaign. Trump didn’t like the decision at the time and has come to view it as the root of everything that led to the appointment of Bob Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.
Following that spate of stories, you might think Trump or his surrogates would throw Sessions a life raft in the form of a vote of confidence. Instead, they let him twist in the wind — repeatedly refusing to say whether the President still had confidence in his attorney general.
“Absolutely, the President has confidence in all of his Cabinet, and if he didn’t, they wouldn’t be here,” deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Thursday. Which, in case you’re new to politics, isn’t exactly a full-throated Sessions endorsement.
Sessions’ week went from really bad to holy-cow-what-else-can-happen-to-me on Thursday when fired FBI Director James Comey testified about his interactions with Trump over the Russia investigation. While Sessions wasn’t the focus of the questions (or the answers), he came under some heavy criticism from his former underling.
In explaining why he decided not to share his concerns about Trump with Sessions, Comey said: “Our judgment, as I recall, was that he was very close to and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons. We also were aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic.”
POW!
Describing the February 14 meeting in which Sessions was asked to leave the Oval Office so Trump could talk to Comey alone, the deposed FBI director said: “My sense was the attorney general knew he shouldn’t be leaving, which is why he was lingering.”
WHACK!
Things don’t look like they will be getting better for Sessions anytime soon. According to CNN’s reporting, Comey told senators in a closed-door session Thursday that Sessions may have had a third interaction with Kisylak that had not been previously disclosed.
Jeff Sessions, for being reminded that it’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black, you had the Worst Week in Washington. Congrats. or something.
