By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Thursday, July 27, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the Associated Press that he will continue to serve as Attorney General as long as President Trump wants him to.
AG Sessions told the AP in El Salvador that Trump has every right to find another Attorney General. Sessions said, “I serve at the pleasure of the President. I’ve understood that from the day I took the job.”
President Trump has publicly criticized his Attorney General this week first in a New York Times interview, and then in a barrage of tweets and awkward statements at public meetings, Many Whitehouse observers believe that Trump is trying to force Sessions to resign and may fire him at any point.
Trump is angry that the Attorney General recused himself months ago from the investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016bTrump campaign and the Russian government.
After Sessions recused himself, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to head the investigation into the Russia collusion scandal.
Sessions told the AP this hasn’t been the “best week” in his relationship with Trump. But he says he and Trump have a “harmony of values and beliefs.”
Sessions told Fox News that the attacks on him by the President, “Is kind of hurtful.”
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that if Jeff Sessions is fired that his committee will not be scheduling any hearings this year on whomever Trump appoints to replace him.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told reporters, ““This effort to basically marginalize and humiliate the attorney general is not going over well with the Senate. I don’t think it’s going over well in the conservative world. If you believe Jeff Sessions should be fired, use the power you have and accept the consequences. I hope it stops.”
Graham added, “If Jeff Sessions is fired there will be Holy Hell to pay.”
This was a terrible week for President Trump in the US Senate. Three different plans to repeal Obamacare: a full repeal, the McConnell repeal and replace plan, and the “skinny replace” were all defeated by the Senate. The “skinny replace” which just ended the most unpopular portions of the bill but left the costly Medicaid expansion and all the insurance regulations in place was defeated in the early hours on Friday, July 28 51 to 49. All the Democrats voted against the bill and they were joined by Republican Senators: Susan Collins from Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, and John McCain from Arizona.
There is speculation that Trump may be planning to fire Jeff Sessions so that Sessions’ replacement can then remove Robert Mueller as the Special Counsel investigating the Trump campaign Russian collusion allegations.
Senator Graham said, “Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump Presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.”
Graham continued, “The idea that the President would fire Mueller or have somebody fire Mueller because he doesn’t like Mueller, or Mueller is doing something he doesn’t like, then we become Russia.”
Graham said. “So the red line should never be drawn. The President is not in the business of drawing red lines when it comes to the law. The law is above any Presidential red line.”
Graham and Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee is working on legislation that could attempt to insulate Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired.
Sessions is in El Salvador to meet with his Salvadoran counterpart, Attorney General Douglas Melendez. Then he will meet with other law enforcement officials on what his program calls a transnational anti-gang task force focusing on the violent MS-13 gang. MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, is an international criminal gang with tens of thousands of members in multiple Central American countries and many U.S. states. The gang was founded by immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s. It became a force in Central America after some of its leaders were deported back to their home countries.
President Trump will announce his plan to crush the criminal gang in a major speech today.
Jeff Sessions served Alabama as U.S. Senator from 1997 to 2017. Before that Sessions served Alabama as the State’s Attorney General, Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, and US Attorney.
Sessions is one of the most popular political figures in the history of the state. In his last reelection (2014), no Republican and no Democrat could be found who would even run against him.
Original reporting by Fox News, the Associated Press’s Camila Domonoske, NPR, and Politico’s Darren Samuelson contributed to this report.
