Sessions Staying Put As Attorney General
In a not so shocking move Jeff Sessions has declared he is staying on as the United States Attorney General. Sessions has been heavily and openly criticized by President Donald Trump for recusing himself from the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.
While it makes for a good headline this is not a story because it was never realistic that Sessions would willingly leave. Jeff Sessions strategically began singing Trump’s praises during the campaign to get where he is how, at the head of the Justice Department. His loyalty to Trump was most likely paper thin at best, but he saw an opportunity to shape the justice system to his image.
Trump’s rhetoric early on probably gave Sessions the impression that Trump would let him fire up the drug war and reverse the Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch influence that was leading to a fairer and less racist justice system. Sessions had to get in there and reverse all the leniency towards drugs and marijuana, instead of legalization and decriminalization we needed to be harsher on these criminals. Instead of treating people for dependency we need to be filling the jails, and building private jails and filling those, not ending federal contracts with private prisons.
Sessions had an agenda and it really didn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump. Jeff Sessions wanted a return to the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years of coming down hard on drug offenders, especially the Black and Latino offenders no matter how big or small. Now that Sessions is the Attorney General and has started the process of implementing his agenda, he doesn’t need Trump to support him openly, he just needs to not get fired. As long as Jeff Sessions can avoid getting fired he can continue to push his agenda and get things back to the way they used to be in the good old days.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he plans to continue to serve in his post “as long as that is appropriate.”
“I have the honor of serving as attorney general. It’s something that goes beyond any thought I would have ever had for myself,” Sessions said during a press conference Thursday, one day after President Trump expressed frustration with the top Justice Department official.
“We love this job, we love this department and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said.
He added that those who work in the Department of Justice “will continue every single day to work hard to serve the national interests and we wholeheartedly join in the priorities that President Trump.”
“I’m totally confident that we can continue to run this office in an effective way,” he said.
In an interview published Wednesday, Trump told the New York Times he would not have chosen Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general had known Sessions would recuse himself from the investigation into Russian election meddling.
Trump called Sessions’ recusal “very unfair to the president.”
“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.
“How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you,” he continued. “It’s extremely unfair – and that’s a mild word – to the president.”
A report last month said Sessions had offered to resign from his position, but Trump did not take him up on the offer.
Multiple investigations are currently looking into the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race. A special counsel was appointed earlier this year to lead the Russia probe.
Trump has previously chided the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt” and the president and his aides have repeatedly denied any collusion.
Steve
Steve is an affordable multifamily housing professional that is also the co-founder of Whiskey Congress. Steve has written for national publications such as The National Marijuana News and other outlets as a guest blogger on topics covering sports, politics, and cannabis. Steve loves whiskey, cigars, and uses powerlifting as an outlet to deal with the fact that no one listens to his brilliant ideas.
