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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, July 28, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 028 ~ 30 of 54
AP EXCLUSIVE: Sessions not leaving unless pushed By SADIE GURMAN and MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — His loyalty to the boss severely tested but seemingly intact, At- torney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday he will stay in the job for as long as President Donald Trump wants him to serve.
Sessions told The Associated Press he and Trump have a “harmony of values and beliefs” and he intends to stay and ght for the president’s agenda “as long as he sees that as appropriate.” This, after a week of being berated by Trump in the most public fashion as weak and ineffective.
“If he wants to make a change, he has every right,” Sessions said in an interview outside the U.S. Em- bassy in San Salvador during a mission to increase international cooperation against the MS-13 gang. “I serve at the pleasure of the president. I’ve understood that from the day I took the job.”
Congressional Republicans have rallied around Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, and expressed morti cation at the humiliation visited on him by Trump in several interviews and a series of tweets.
Trump is upset that Sessions recused himself months ago from the investigation into interactions between Russian of cials and the Trump campaign, and that he has not taken a tougher line against his defeated Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned Thursday there would be “holy hell” to pay if Trump red Sessions.
After meeting his Salvadoran counterpart, Sessions told AP he was “thrilled” with the support he’s re- ceived, presumably from lawmakers.
“I believe we are running a great Department of Justice,” he said. “I believe with great con dence that I understand what is needed in the Department of Justice and what President Trump wants. I share his agenda.”
He acknowledged, with considerable understatement, “it hasn’t been my best week .... for my relation- ship with the president.” The two have not spoken recently, he said. “But I look forward to the opportunity to chat with him about it.”
In Congress, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska went to the Senate oor Thursday to discourage Trump from making a so-called recess appointment while the Senate is away at the end of August — should that be the president’s intention. A recess appointment would allow Trump to appoint anyone of his choosing and bypass Senate con rmation until 2019 if the Senate recesses for 10 days or more in August.
“If you’re thinking of making a recess appointment to push out the attorney general, forget about it,” Sasse said. “The presidency isn’t a bull, and this country isn’t a china shop.”
The previous evening, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, tweeted that he wouldn’t be holding a con rmation hearing for a new attorney general if Trump decided to go that route.
Although largely deferential to a president who seemed bent on tormenting him, Sessions stood his ground on his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. He had bowed out of any involve- ment in that probe after acknowledged meeting with Russia’s ambassador during the campaign.
“Knowing the integrity that’s required of the attorney general, I believe I made the right decision,” he told Fox News. He said his recusal was in keeping with the rule of law “and an attorney general who doesn’t follow the law is not very effective in leading the Department of Justice.”
The White House of late has appeared to be trying to tamp down the notion that Trump wants Sessions out — without offering a rousing endorsement of him, however.
“The president wants him to do his job, do it properly,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Hucka- bee Sanders, said Thursday. “He wants him to be tough on the intelligence leaks and he wants him to move forward.”
In San Salvador, Sessions met his Salvadoran counterpart, Douglas Melendez, and congratulated him on charges laid over the last two days against more than 700 gang members, many of them from MS-13, said the Justice Department.