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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Atty. Gen. Sessions resigns

    Atty. Gen. Sessions resigns, setting up likely clash over the Russia investigation

    Chris Megerian and Del Quentin Wilber Contact Reporters

    Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has resigned, ending a tortured relationship with President Trump and opening what could be historic fight over the sprawling criminal investigation that has clouded his White House tenure.

    In a letter delivered to the White House, Sessions wrote that he was submitting his resignation at the request of President Trump, who has been highly critical of his attorney general since he recused himself last year from overseeing investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.


    Sessions wrote that he had been honored to serve as attorney general and sought to uphold the rule of law. “I came to work at the Department of Justice everyday determined to do my duty and serve my country,” he wrote. “I have done so to the best of my ability.”


    Trump long had wanted Sessions gone but he resisted forcing him out until after the midterm election. Session’s resignation almost certainly gets ahead of his being fired by the president.


    With Sessions out, Trump may attempt to limit or end the probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and whether the president himself obstructed justice.With S

    A new attorney general could take control of the criminal probe, which has already led to guilty pleas from several of Trump’s former top aides, and restrict its budget or scope.

    During his time in office, Sessions had sought to carry out the president’s agenda despite their toxic relationship, steering the Justice Department to tougher policies on violent crime, drug trafficking and immigration.


    Sessions endured months of humiliating criticism from the president, who publicly accused his attorney general of disloyalty and weakness, and privately mocked him.


    On Aug. 23, for example, Trump complained on Fox News that Sessions “never took control of the Justice Department” and said he only nominated him as the nation’s top lawman because “he was an original supporter” of Trump’s insurgent campaign. “What kind of man is this?” he asked angrily.


    Sessions signaled he had no intention of stepping down voluntarily, however, and pushed back at Trump with public statements that asserted the traditional independence of the Justice Department.


    The department’s actions “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” Sessions responded after Trump’s Fox News interview. He repeatedly resisted the president’s calls to launch prosecutions of Hillary Clinton and other political opponents.


    But the former four-term U.S. senator from Alabama saw his support soften among key Republicans on Capitol Hill in recent months.

    That gave Trump an opening to remove him and potentially assert more control over the Russia investigation that he has condemned as a “witch hunt.”


    The president has repeatedly insisted there was “no collusion” between his 2016 campaign and Moscow’s effort to steer the election in his favor through computer hacking, social media posts and other tactics.


    Although no Americans have been charged with conspiring with the Russian intelligence operation, the criminal probe has dug deep into Trump’s inner circle.


    Among others, Trump’s former national security advisor pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, his former campaign chairman was convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud, his former deputy campaign manager pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, and his former lawyer pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign law violations in a case that grew out of the Mueller probe.


    Firing Sessions could create even greater jeopardy for the president, however. Mueller has sought to determine if Trump improperly tried to obstruct the investigation, an offense that was included in impeachment proceedings for presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.


    One episode already under scrutiny is Trump’s dismissal of FBI Director James B. Comey in May 2017, a decision the president himself attributed to frustration over the Russia probe.

    Removing Sessions could fall into the same category.


    The long-expected firing of the attorney general is a remarkable end to a key political alliance.

    An arch-conservative, Sessions was the first member of the U.S. Senate to throw his support behind Trump’s unlikely presidential bid, and he helped shape the anti-immigration, tough-on-crime message that helped propel the reality TV star into the White House. Trump named him to lead the Justice Department after the election.

    But their relationship evaporated after Sessions, on advice from Justice Department ethics lawyers, recused himself from the Russia probe shortly after he was confirmed by the Senate in March 2016. Sessions had failed to tell his confirmation hearing about his own meetings with a Russian diplomat during the campaign, sparking concerns about his candor.


    In response to a question by then-Sen. Al Franken, Sessions said he “did not have communications” with Russians. He later admitted that he spoke at least three times with Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador, during the campaign.


    In two other congressional hearings, Sessions tried to explain himself but fumbled as he gave answers that some lawmakers considered misleading. The FBI reportedly investigated him for making false statements to Congress, but his personal lawyer said the probe was dropped after Sessions was interviewed by the special counsel’s office.


    Once Sessions recused himself, the investigation was put under Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and a career Justice Department official. After Trump fired Comey, Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel in an effort to guarantee his independence.


    Trump has publicly blasted Sessions ever since, apparently viewing Sessions’ recusal as a personal betrayal.

    The invective reached a crescendo in mid-2017 when Trump criticized Sessions in a New York Times interview and series of tweets, calling him “beleaguered” and “very weak,” and harping on him to go after Clinton. Sessions endured the abuse and stayed in his job.


    Sessions pushed back when Trump renewed the pressure in February.


    “As long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution,” he said in a statement.


    But as Trump continued to rail against the Mueller probe, Sessions’ position seemed ever more tenuous. Trump even mocked Sessions’ claims of political independence at the Justice Department.


    “Jeff Sessions said he wouldn’t allow politics to influence him only because he doesn’t understand what is happening underneath his command position,” Trump tweeted on Aug. 25.

    The president repeatedly showed no compunction about urging Sessions to take politics into account when making criminal justice decisions, notably when he grumbled about cases against two Republican congressmen, Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of Alpine.

    “Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time [before the midterm elections,]” Trump tweeted on Sept. 2. He added sarcastically, “Good job Jeff.”


    Some Republican senators signaled they were open to considering a replacement as Trump ramped up his invective.


    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said last year there would be "holy hell to pay" if Sessions were fired, recently said he “is not the only man in the country who can be attorney general.”


    “We need an attorney general that can work with the president,” Graham told NBC News.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remained a staunch supporter of Sessions, telling reporters “he ought to stay exactly where he is."

    That sentiment could mean a tough road ahead as Trump tries to find a nominee who can survive the Senate confirmation process. Many Republicans are unhappy with Trump’s harsh treatment of their former colleagues, and Democrats — who are sharply critical of Sessions’ policies — are likely to stick up for his integrity.


    During his tenure, Sessions pushed the Justice Department to adopt tougher policies on violent crime, drug trafficking and immigration enforcement, issues he previously had championed in the Senate.


    Bucking a bipartisan trend to support less harsh tactics for drug offenders, Sessions instructed federal prosecutors to file the most serious charges possible, and to seek the death penalty when appropriate. He moved to pull back on the department’s work on reforming abusive police departments.


    And while not exactly declaring war on states with legal marijuana — still an illegal drug under federal law — Sessions made clear he was eager to roll back the growth of the cannabis industry.


    A longtime Senate hardliner on immigration, Sessions also was an enthusiastic backer of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, supporting workplace raids deep in the country to arrest and deport people without proper documentation.


    Sessions denounced sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with immigration agents. He pushed to strip the communities of federal law enforcement grants, threatened to investigate recalcitrant city officials for crimes, and filed a suit to overturn California’s sanctuary policies.

    http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...107-story.html

    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 11-07-2018 at 03:55 PM.
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  2. #2
    MW
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    Trump Forces Out Jeff Sessions as He Cleans House After the Midterms

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    Attorney General Jeff Sessions was one of Donald J. Trump’s earliest and strongest supporters.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York TimesBy Peter Baker and Katie Benner



    • Nov. 7, 2018


    WASHINGTON — President Trump forced out Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday, ending a partnership that soured almost from the start of the administration and degenerated into one of the most acrimonious public standoffs between a commander in chief and a senior cabinet member in modern American history.

    Mr. Sessions’s resignation, made at the president’s request, was being delivered to John Kelly, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. It came just a day after midterm elections in which Democrats captured control of the House, but Republican success in holding onto the Senate and building their slim majority may make it easier for the president to confirm a successor.

    “Dear Mr. President, at your request I am submitting my resignation,” Mr. Sessions said in his letter. He added, “Most importantly as my time as attorney general, we have restored and upheld the rule of law,” and thanked the president.

    Matthew Whitaker, Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff, will take over as acting attorney general, Mr. Trump said in a tweet announcing the shake-up.

    “We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well!” he wrote. “A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date.”

    The president has regularly attacked the Justice Department and Mr. Sessions, blaming the attorney general for the specter of the special counsel investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.

    Mr. Trump has said for months that he wished to replace Mr. Sessions, but lawmakers and administration officials believed that firing the attorney general before the midterm elections would have had negative consequences for Republicans in tight races. So it came as little surprise when Mr. Sessions’s resigned the day after the midterms were over.

    Mr. Trump blamed Mr. Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the investigation in its early stages, leading to the appointment of a special counsel.

    “He took the job and then he said, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.’ I said, ‘What kind of a man is this?’” Mr. Trump said this year in a Fox News interview. “I wanted to stay uninvolved. But when everybody sees what’s going on in the Justice Department — I always put ‘justice’ now with quotes.”

    The deputy attorney general, now Mr. Rosenstein, would normally be in line to become the acting attorney general, but Mr. Trump has complained publicly about Mr. Rosenstein, too. Since Mr. Sessions is recused from all election-related matters, Mr. Rosenstein oversees the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia.

    Such a move might clear the way for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller. To dismiss a special counsel, the president has to order the attorney general or, in the case of a recusal, the deputy attorney general to carry it out. Mr. Rosenstein has said that he sees no justification to dismiss Mr. Mueller. Mr. Trump has already fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director originally overseeing the investigation.

    In pushing out his attorney general, the president cast aside one of his earliest and strongest supporters.
    In February 2016, Mr. Sessions became the first sitting senator to endorse Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and in the months leading up to the election, he became one of the candidate’s closest national security advisers.
    Only weeks after he was confirmed as the United States’ top law enforcement officer, Mr. Sessions became ensnared in the Russia inquiries that have consumed Mr. Trump’s presidency. He recused himself from overseeing the Justice Department investigation in March 2017, after revelations that he had failed to report encounters with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak of Russia during the 2016 campaign.

    At the time, Mr. Sessions said there was nothing nefarious about those meetings, although he acknowledged that he “should have slowed down” and been more thoughtful in denying any contacts with Russian officials during his Senate confirmation process. His recusal was one of his first public acts as attorney general.

    Mr. Trump has long believed that those who have supported and defended him are most entitled to high-ranking positions in the federal government. Mr. Sessions, in Mr. Trump’s mind, had betrayed that axiom.

    In a July 2017 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump unexpectedly lashed out at Mr. Sessions.
    “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,” Mr. Trump said. He said Mr. Sessions had given some “bad answers” during his confirmation hearings.

    Mr. Trump never forgave Mr. Sessions, and over the next year and a half, his complaints about Mr. Sessions on Twitter and in his public comments became more pointed and insulting. At various points, he called Mr. Sessions “beleaguered,” “VERY weak” and “DISGRACEFUL.” In private, he referred to him derisively as “Mr. Magoo,” after the befuddled cartoon character.

    Mr. Trump also publicly badgered Mr. Sessions to open investigations into his defeated rival, Hillary Clinton, and other Democrats, and when Mr. Sessions did not, the president excoriated the attorney general. Critics from both parties said the president was shredding the traditional independence of the law enforcement agencies in seeking what appeared to be politically motivated prosecutions.

    For the most part, Mr. Sessions made no public retort. But after the president chided him in February for leaving an inquiry into the F.B.I.’s handling of the Russia investigation to an inspector general rather than conducting his own review, Mr. Sessions pushed back. “As long as I am the attorney general,” he said, “I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor.”

    In March, Mr. Sessions said he still believed he did the right thing in recusing himself. “I don’t think the attorney general can ask everybody else in the department to follow the rules if the attorney general doesn’t follow them,” he told Time magazine.

    When Mr. Trump said that Mr. Sessions “never took control of the Justice Department,” Mr. Sessions fired back hours later, saying in a rare public rebuke that he “took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in.”

    “The Department of Justice,” Mr. Sessions said, “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

    Mr. Sessions seemed more aligned with the president when he fired Andrew G. McCabe as deputy director of the F.B.I. barely a day before Mr. McCabe was due to retire, jeopardizing his pension. Mr. Trump for months had publicly berated Mr. McCabe, a Republican, because Mr. McCabe’s wife had run for office as a Democrat with financial support from a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s. In firing him, Mr. Sessions cited an inspector general investigation that found that Mr. McCabe had not been fully candid about his interactions with a reporter, an assertion the former deputy director denied.

    Mr. Sessions tried to resign at least twice. In June 2017, shortly after his recusal, Mr. Trump berated Mr. Sessions during a private meeting in the Oval Office and accused him of “disloyalty.” Mr. Sessions grew emotional and agreed to resign. Reince Priebus, then the White House chief of staff, later said he ran out of the building to find the attorney general in the parking lot and stop him from leaving.

    Ultimately, Mr. Priebus persuaded Mr. Trump not to accept the resignation. Mr. Priebus said he intervened again to save Mr. Sessions a couple of months later when the president again demanded a resignation. “If I get this resignation,” Mr. Priebus remembered telling Mr. Trump, “you are in for a spiral of calamity that makes Comey look like a picnic.”

    As attorney general, Mr. Sessions made a forceful mark on the Justice Department. He rolled back some of President Barack Obama’s signature policies as he encouraged federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against criminal suspects. He successfully advised Mr. Trump to rescind Mr. Obama’s program protecting nearly 700,000 young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children. He sued California over its sanctuary laws and targeted states that legalized marijuana.

    Mr. Sessions, 71, got his start in politics as a United States attorney in Alabama, but his nomination for a federal judgeship was blocked by the Senate amid charges of racial insensitivity. He mounted a comeback by winning election as the state attorney general and then, in 1996, to the Senate that had once rejected him.

    Rebecca R. Ruiz and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/u...red-trump.html


    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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  3. #3
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    (((Rep. Nadler))) Retweeted Donald J. Trump
    Americans must have answers immediately as to the reasoning behind @realDonaldTrump removing Jeff Sessions from @TheJusticeDept. Why is the President making this change and who has authority over Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation? We will be holding people accountable.
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    MW
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    President Trump is a full-blown idiot and fails to understand how much damage he is doing to himself with his base. I'm through with him.

    It's hard to believe that he would force the retirement of somebody that has went above and beyond the call of duty in dealing with our country's immigration/illegal immigration problem, especially when he claims to consider the immigration/border security issue as one of his top priorities.

    Jeff Sessions has done absolutely everything an Attorney General could do to fight an over-zealous asylum and failed immigration program.

    Immigration/border security is my top issue and forcing Jeff Sessions out was the last straw for me.

    Hmm, so I wonder what the chances are that illegal alien amnesty supporting Sen. Graham will get the job? Losing the U.S. House and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the same time is a lot to swallow! The loss of the House is all the more reason Jeff Sessions should have kept his job.

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  6. #6
    MW
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    So now I'm left wondering how many of Jeff Sessions policy changes will revert back to the Obama era policies?

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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  7. #7
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MW View Post
    So now I'm left wondering how many of Jeff Sessions policy changes will revert back to the Obama era policies?
    Here it comes:

    Donald Trump Hints at DACA Deal

    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


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  8. #8
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    This is a huge mistake by President Trump. He is cuddling up to Nancy Pelosi today, talking about making a deal with Democrats on DACA Amnesty, and getting rid of a true patriot like Jeff Sessions.... big and irreversible mistake Trump!
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  9. #9
    Senior Member southBronx's Avatar
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    I SAY GEN SESSIONS/
    was a two face I did not trust him at all
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  10. #10
    Senior Member southBronx's Avatar
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    your right Mr Gheen
    about Nancy she another one I doing trust . as for jeff Sessions I never trust him at all
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