Thread: Trump Supporters Will Miss Jeff Sessions Now That He’s Gone

Trump Supporters Will Miss Jeff Sessions Now That He’s Gone

Trump didn’t get the attorney general he wanted, but he got the one he needed.

Dominic Holden

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on November 7, 2018, at 4:15 p.m. ET

President Trump’s allies have been itching for months for him to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, failing to acknowledge that it’s Sessions, arguably even more than Trump, who has shaped much of the anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT domestic policy agenda that the Republican base loves.

“Coward @jeffsessions has to go,” one account said Wednesday, minutes before Sessions finally resigned at the president’s request. “He is traitor of GOP and Trump. He is puppet of Democrats.”

Sure, tell that to Democrats.

As Sessions quit, much of the country began asking who will take his place long-term. But the far right took a moment to laud their victory (“He never should have been hired,” David Wohl, a campaign surrogate for Trump, tweeted). The next attorney general could stymie the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller, which Sessions had recused himself from, possibly freeing Trump from that albatross.

But it’s hard to conceive of an attorney general more aligned with Trump’s agenda and capable of accomplishing it than Sessions, a former US attorney and senator.

As head of the Justice Department, Sessions cranked through conservative achievements on immigration, drugs, crime, and civil rights reversals that fueled Trump’s base, offering stability to the administration and sending Democrats into hysterics.

While the White House was on defense over Russia, Sessions was a bedrock amid the storm — all the more effective because he was unencumbered by the Mueller investigation. A Southern gentleman who could counterbalance Trump’s bombast, he was deferential to the president and never humiliated the White House with a scandal over ordering furniture that costs more than a steelworker’s salary.

But Trump often stumbled when trying to furnish his base with popular policies. For example, Trump’s big, beautiful wall still isn’t built (or funded). Trump’s executive order to cut off sanctuary cities? It’s been blocked by courts. His plans to ban transgender military service? That, too, has been blocked in court. Ending DACA? Same fate.

In contrast, perhaps no issue better represents Sessions’ surgical effectiveness — and harmony with Trump’s central cause — than his tight grip on immigration.

Sessions marched ahead with an itinerary of near-daily press events where he rolled out lawsuits and policies that framed the administration the way it wanted to be seen. Sessions told immigration law judges, who operated under his watch, to show less “sympathy” for those seeking asylum, while speeding up cases and accelerating deportations. He ordered those judges to stop granting asylum to certain domestic abuse and gang violence victims, reversing a policy from the Obama administration. Perhaps most famously, Sessions was the architect of the “zero tolerance” border policythat led to family separations (which infuriated progressives). “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions intoned at a press event at the border before the policy was enacted.

Meanwhile, he instructed US attorneys to prioritize border cases against first-time offenders. And throughout his tenure, Sessions prosecuted members of MS-13, a gang with ties to Mexico and Central America. He has also cut off tens of millions of dollars from most sanctuary cities, with the permission of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, a major cause of the right.

Sessions was as xenophobic as Trump and eager to accuse Democrats of fomenting crime, while demonstrating the skill of a seasoned politician to actually accomplish the administration’s goals.

Sessions brought results on other key issues. He issued a memo that said it is legal to fire people simply for being transgender, while arguing the same to the Supreme Court last month. He argued in another case it’s legal to fire gay workers, and he argued at the Supreme Court that it’s legal for a baker turn away gay customers trying to buy a wedding cake — a case the baker won, with Sessions’ backing.

While Trump’s voter fraud commission flopped, and one member turned over documents refuting the premise of mass voter fraud, Sessions made headway. He demanded that states hand over troves of election data, a move that was widely seen as pressuring states to purge their voter roles or risk being sued. The Justice Department went on to charge 19 foreigners in August with illegal voting.

Trump has vowed to crack down on drugs, but it’s Sessions who reinstated long mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, while incentivizing local cops to seize property from suspects. He’s shifted back toward private prisons, while pushing to make transgender women share quarters with male prisoners. Sessions, meanwhile, led a fight to block undocumented women from getting abortions.

Sessions also stopped the civil rights investigations into local police accused of unconstitutional use of force and racial profiling, instead attempting to block a police reform settlement in Chicago.

All the while, Trump supporters denounce the Russia investigation for distracting from Trump’s actual agenda — but ironically, they want to punish the attorney general who’s been at the vanguard of manifesting that agenda all along.

If a replacement attorney general does intervene with Mueller’s Russia investigation, it will become a consuming job, if not a tar pit of scandal. And that sort of intervention will all but guarantee that the replacement AG can’t invest in the conservative agenda as much as Sessions did.

Trump said Wednesday the acting attorney general will be Matt Whitaker — who said in a CNN op-ed that Mueller’s Russia probe was “going too far” — and he will oversee the Russia probe instead of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. If Whitaker tries to end the Russia inquiry, he may become riddled by public scrutiny, while stealing the limelight — the sort of official that Trump has shown time and again he will replace (Corey Lewandowski, Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci, and Steve Bannon among them).

Terminating Sessions and then installing a more malleable replacement could put Trump right back where he is now, but with even more scrutiny over Russia and an attorney general less capable of enacting Trump’s agenda.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...ump-supporters

Oh the new Acting and eventually an AG confirmed by the Senate will definitely do things differently than Sessions on the Russia Probe, because Sessions didn't do anything on the Russia Probe, he recused himself.

In the meantime, I hope Whitaker immediately approves release of all the classified documents requested by Congress including the Scope document that outlined the task of the investigation. I hope these documents are not only released to Congress but released to the public. I don't care what concerns the UK or Australia have in this, because frankly, they shouldn't have been involved in any way, shape or form in any aspect of spying on candidates for President of the United States, whether Trump or anyone else. Shame on them both. Yes, I bet they are "worried" .... because when this all comes out, Americans will not like what they did one single bit.

Oh yeah, Jeff Sessions will definitely be missed! IMO, firing Sessions was a bonehead move by Trump. I guess the immigration issue isn't as important to Trump as he claims.

Trump’s dishonest, incoherent defense of naming Matt Whitaker acting attorney general


He falsely claimed that he didn’t even know Whitaker.

By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Nov 9, 2018, 12:20pm EST


President Donald Trump Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesWith his choice of Matt Whitaker to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions under fire, President Donald Trump took questions from reporters Friday morning and offered a dishonest and incoherent defense of the decision.

First off, Trump insisted he didn’t “know” Whitaker at all, in an apparent attempt to push back on criticism that he was putting a crony in the job. However, according to multiple reports, Whitaker has visited the White House, briefed Trump many times, and is well liked by the president — and certainly “known” by him.

Second, Trump tried to argue that Whitaker had been confirmed by the Senate years ago — but that Robert Mueller hadn’t been. He may have been alluding to dueling legal arguments over the constitutionality of each’s appointment. But his point made no sense on its face, since Whitaker has one old confirmation by the Senate, and Mueller has four of them.

Finally, Trump simply would not answer the question on everyone’s minds — whether he wants Whitaker to interfere with Mueller’s probe — and instead just dismissed the question as “stupid.”

None of this did anything to alleviate widespread concerns that Trump was going around DOJ’s line of succession to install Whitaker specifically so he could rein in or end the Mueller investigation.

Trump said, “I don’t know Matt Whitaker.” He does know him.

The president began by repeatedly asserting that he didn’t know Whitaker. “I don’t know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker worked for Jeff Sessions,” he said. Then he repeated it: “But I didn’t know Matt Whitaker. He worked for Attorney General Sessions.”

Multiple reports suggest Trump’s claim to not “know” Whitaker is flatly false.

For one, the Washington Post reported this week that Whitaker “had briefed Trump on many occasions because the president preferred not to talk to Sessions.” And another Post reportdescribe Whitaker being in the room while Trump ranted about Mueller.

As Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker met with the president in the Oval Office more than a dozen times, normally accompanying the attorney general, according to a senior administration official. When Trump complained about the Mueller investigation, Whitaker often smiled knowingly and nodded in assent, the official said.



Also, the Associated Press reported that “Trump had enjoyed Whitaker’s cable TV appearances” before he’d joined the Justice Department and that “the two men soon struck a bond.” The AP added:

Trump told associates that he felt that Whitaker would be ‘loyal’ and would not have recused himself from the Russia probe as Sessions had done, according to two Republicans close to the White House not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.



The New York Times reported that “the president has long regarded Mr. Whitaker as his eyes and ears” inside the Justice Department, adding that Whitaker had “been a frequent White House visitor.” And Axios reported that “Trump likes and trusts Whitaker.”

So Trump’s claim to not know Whitaker appears to be an outright lie.

Trump made nonsensical points about Whitaker being Senate confirmed and not Mueller

Another major criticism of Whitaker’s appointment has been that Trump went outside the Justice Department’s line of succession to replace Sessions with someone who had not been Senate-confirmed. Indeed, George Conway and Neal Katyal argued in the New York Times Thursday that this made Whitaker’s appointment illegal and unconstitutional.

Trump attempted to fire back by insisting that, actually, the problem was that Robert Mueller wasn’t Senate-confirmed, and that Whitaker had been a while back.

“Mueller is doing a report. He hasn’t gone through the Senate process. You’re saying Whitaker hasn’t. But Whitaker has — wait a minute — because he was a really distinguished US attorney in Iowa...

...Mueller, a big complaint people have, Mueller was not Senate-confirmed. So he’s doing a report. He wasn’t Senate-confirmed. Whitaker was Senate-confirmed. He doesn’t need this, but he was Senate-confirmed at the highest level when he was the US Attorney from Iowa?”



By claiming Whitaker is Senate-confirmed and Mueller wasn’t, Trump is referring to Whitaker’s old confirmation for a US attorney job in 2004. Yet Mueller has in fact been confirmed four times by the Senate for various positions, most recently in 2011. So if Trump counts Whitaker’s old confirmation, he should have to count Mueller’s multiple old ones.

None of that really matters, because all of those confirmations lapsed — Whitaker left the US attorney job in 2009 and was out of government for eight years, while Mueller left the FBI director job in 2013. Neither count as Senate-confirmed under the current administration.

It’s also true that by the plain text of existing laws and regulations, neither of them definitively seem to need to be confirmed. Mueller’s job as special counsel is not a Senate-confirmed post. And Georgetown Law professor Marty Lederman wrote that Whitaker may qualify for an appointment as acting AG under the Vacancies Reform Act despite not being Senate-confirmed.

What Conway and Katyal are arguing is that there is a constitutional issue with appointing Whitaker as acting AG, because he wasn’t Senate-confirmed. The Appointments Clause of the Constitution, they say, requires a “principal officer” of the executive branch to be confirmed by the Senate.

Conservatives and lawyers for people involved in the Russia probe have made similar arguments about Mueller, trying to strike down his appointment by saying the Appointments Clause requires a position like his should be Senate-confirmed. But their arguments have had little success in the courts so far, in part because Mueller is not a “principal officer” — he reports to the acting attorney general, not directly to the president. (The issue is expected to make it to the Supreme Court at some point.)

Trump refused to answer whether he wanted Whitaker to rein in Robert Mueller

Finally, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Trump, “Do you expect Matt Whitaker to be involved in the Russia probe.”

“It’s up to him,” Trump said.

“Do you want him to be involved?” Phillip followed up. “Do you want him to rein in Robert Mueller?”

But Trump didn’t answer her directly.

“What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions,” he said.

It is, of course, not a stupid question. Regardless of the legality of Trump’s appointment of Whitaker as acting AG, there were two highly unusual things about how Trump handled Sessions’s ouster.

First, he told Sessions to leave on Wednesday rather than waiting for a successor to be confirmed. Second, rather than just following the DOJ’s line of succession and letting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein replace Sessions on an acting basis, Trump went around Rosenstein to install Whitaker, who has a reputation for being close to the White House and a long record of public comments critical of Mueller.

Then we got a series of leaks claiming both that Trump did not expect Whitaker to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation, and that Whitaker in fact wouldn’t recuse himself (according to “people close to him”).

All of this stinks to high heaven. And Trump’s comments did nothing to clear up that stink.


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ssions-mueller

Giggles. DemoQuacks going berserk. Only one DemoQuack in the US Senate voted to confirm Jeff Sessions, Joe Manchin. Now hard-left wack-o-doodle DemoQuacks can't get enough of Jeff Sessions.

Originally Posted by MW

Oh yeah, Jeff Sessions will definitely be missed! IMO, firing Sessions was a bonehead move by Trump. I guess the immigration issue isn't as important to Trump as he claims.

I think firing Jeff Sessions was the biggest mistake Trump ever made. He better make up for it by getting his ass in gear and start cracking down big time on this illegal alien invasion.

Originally Posted by Judy

Giggles. DemoQuacks going berserk. Only one DemoQuack in the US Senate voted to confirm Jeff Sessions, Joe Manchin. And Richard Shelby, Republican, from Alabama, Sessions home state, voted "present", neither for nor against Sessions, how weird is that??!! Now hard-left wack-o-doodle DemoQuacks can't get enough of Jeff Sessions.

According to the following, Shelby voted yes on Jeff Sessions confirmation. Sessions was the only one to vote present.

How Senators Voted on Jeff Sessions

By THE NEW YORK TIMES FEB. 8, 2017

The Senate voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Here’s a full list of Senate confirmation votes.

51 votes will ensure confirmation

Yes

52

No

47

Present: 1



Voted “yes”

D	Joe Manchin III W.Va.
R	Dean Heller Nev.
R	Jerry Moran Kan.
R	Lisa Murkowski Alaska
R	John Barrasso Wyo.
R	Rob Portman Ohio
R	Bill Cassidy La.
R	James Lankford Okla.
R	Ron Johnson Wis.
R	Mike Lee Utah
R	Steve Daines Mont.
R	Roy Blunt Mo.
R	Tom Cotton Ark.
R	John Boozman Ark.
R	Rand Paul Ky.
R	Deb Fischer Neb.
R	Dan Sullivan Alaska
R	Jim Risch Idaho
R	Michael D. Crapo Idaho
R	John Hoeven N.D.
R	Shelley Moore Capito W.Va.
R	Orrin G. Hatch Utah
R	Bob Corker Tenn.
R	John Thune S.D.
R	Michael B. Enzi Wyo.
R	Richard M. Burr N.C.
R	James M. Inhofe Okla.
R	Jeff Flake Ariz.
R	Todd Young Ind.
R	John McCain Ariz.
R	Roger Wicker Miss.
R	Patrick J. Toomey Pa.
R	Thom Tillis N.C.
R	Richard C. Shelby Ala.
R	Tim Scott S.C.
R	Ben Sasse Neb.
R	Marco Rubio Fla.
R	Michael Rounds S.D.
R	Pat Roberts Kan.
R	David Perdue Ga.
R	Mitch McConnell Ky.
R	John Kennedy La.
R	Johnny Isakson Ga.
R	Charles E. Grassley Iowa
R	Lindsey Graham S.C.
R	Cory Gardner Colo.
R	Joni Ernst Iowa
R	Ted Cruz Tex.
R	John Cornyn Tex.
R	Susan Collins Me.
R	Thad Cochran Miss.
R	Lamar Alexander Tenn.

Voted “no”

D	Mazie K. Hirono Hawaii
D	Brian Schatz Hawaii
D	Sherrod Brown Ohio
D	Robert Menendez N.J.
D	Sheldon Whitehouse R.I.
D	Bill Nelson Fla.
D	Dianne Feinstein Calif.
D	Claire McCaskill Mo.
D	Kirsten Gillibrand N.Y.
D	Richard Blumenthal Conn.
D	Kamala Harris Calif.
D	Joe Donnelly Ind.
D	Gary Peters Mich.
D	Mark Warner Va.
D	Edward J. Markey Mass.
D	Martin Heinrich N.M.
D	Cory Booker N.J.
D	Michael Bennet Colo.
D	Christopher S. Murphy Conn.
D	Tom Udall N.M.
D	Bob Casey Pa.
D	Chris Coons Del.
D	Heidi Heitkamp N.D.
D	Debbie Stabenow Mich.
D	Chuck Schumer N.Y.
D	Jeanne Shaheen N.H.
D	Benjamin L. Cardin Md.
D	Tammy Duckworth Ill.
D	Ron Wyden Ore.
D	Elizabeth Warren Mass.
D	Chris Van Hollen Md.
D	Jon Tester Mont.
D	Jack Reed R.I.
D	Patty Murray Wash.
D	Jeff Merkley Ore.
D	Patrick J. Leahy Vt.
D	Amy Klobuchar Minn.
D	Tim Kaine Va.
D	Maggie Hassan N.H.
D	Al Franken Minn.
D	Richard J. Durbin Ill.
D	Catherine Cortez Masto Nev.
D	Thomas R. Carper Del.
D	Maria Cantwell Wash.
D	Tammy Baldwin Wis.
I	Angus King Me.
I	Bernie Sanders Vt.

“Present” votes

R	Jeff Sessions Ala.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...tion-vote.html

So why didn't sessions prosecute the officials in the sanctuary cities.?? They encouraged illegals to live in america and that is a brazen violation of section 1324 of title 8 of the US code.

Why didn't Sessions let DACA 2012 that was renewed in 2014 expire or announce it expired and not being renewed on June 15 with DAPA and DACA Expansion like the White House and Trump wanted to do? Why separate it out and then have a controversial "rescission"? It was all in the same Jeh Johnson Memo of 2014. If you can declare due to non-renewal the other 2, you could have done the same thing with DACA 2012? When you don't do something and just let it expire or announce it expired, the burden is then on the opposition to say "oh no it didn't expire", then they have to prove it didn't expire which they wouldn't be able to do without a trial and no jury is going to say a 2 or 3 year programs goes forever. Under contract law, there is no forever, and certainly no longer than the term of the right given.

Why did Sessions make a federal case out of a UAC, female who is found to be pregnant who wanted an abortion and under our laws is certainly entitled to one, at her expense of course, fighting her right to that which is also in our national interest because we don't want any more anchor babies born in the US? I don't know how many votes that cost Republicans in the mid-terms, but it was a lot, I can tell you that, especially among younger voters and women.

Why did Sessions declare zero tolerance policy without the resources to implement properly that separated children from parents/adults (kidnapping) when they should have been denied entry at the border for false claims? I don't know how many votes that fiasco cost Republicans in the mid-terms, but it was a lot, especially women voters, I can tell you that.

Republicans are the minority party in the US, so we can't win elections on our own, we have to have a lot of independent voters and even some registered Democrats to win General Elections nationwide.

If Republicans don't win elections by enough margins to actually pass a bill, then we can't do anything legislatively we want to do on solving immigration issues of any kind, whether illegal immigration or excess legal immigration, which means our country is doomed to open borders.

I don't think it's sunk in yet what the election outcome on Tuesday actually means to the people of the United States, but what it means is that illegal aliens will have the right to vote in our elections long before Republicans can ever pass a bill to keep them out or remove them from our soil.

That is the tragic reality of what happened on November 7, 2018 in the United States of America.

Lawyers for Gillum, Nelson campaigns objected to noncitizen's vote being denied

By Adam Shaw | Fox News
Published 10 hours ago

Republican strategist Alana Roethle, Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright discuss their reactions to the recount demanded in Florida Senate and governor races.

Lawyers for the Florida Democratic gubernatorial and Senate candidates objected Friday to the rejection of a provisional ballot cast by a noncitizen, according to a transcript obtained by Fox News.

The incident occurred during a canvassing meeting Friday in Palm Beach County, where provisional ballots were being examined. According to the draft transcript of the meeting, taken by a court reporter hired by the Florida Republican Party, a provisional ballot was ordered excluded from the count, as it came from a non-U.S. citizen.

“First one of these we’ve seen,” said Judge August Bonativa.

“Not a U.S. citizen, not counted.” said Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher, according to the transcript.

It was at this point where lawyers representing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., issued objections -- although they did not give reasons for those objections. The objections were noted, but the vote was still not counted.

The Nelson campaign distanced itself from the objections, which it said that it had not authorized.

“The lawyer who was present was not someone we had authorized to make such an objection. Noncitizens cannot vote in U.S. elections," Marc Elias, recount attorney for the Nelson campaign, said in a statement. The Gillum campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The controversy comes amid a broader fight over the Senate and gubernatorial races, in which leads for Republicans have shrunk, leading the state’s secretary of state to order a recount on Saturday.

Republicans have questioned the handling of the votes, particularly in Palm Beach and Broward counties, and have pointed to past controversies in Broward in particular as evidence that voter fraud may be underway. On Saturday, President Trump said Democrats were “trying to STEAL two big elections in Florida!”

Democrats have claimed that Republicans are trying to stop all the votes from being counted as the race has started to favor the Democrats.

Republicans saw Friday’s objection in Palm Beach County as an indication of the tactics Democrats were prepared to use.

“We think it is a sign of desperation and goes to demonstrate the tactics that the Democrats, especially the Florida Democratic Party, Andrew Gillum’s campaign and Bill Nelson’s campaign, will resort to to steal this election from the rightful winners -- Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis,” Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, told Fox News.

“It’s shameful, there’s no excuse for objecting to the rejection of a non-U.S. citizen vote, but this is just one example of the shenanigans and corruption we’ve seen from the Democrats in Florida for so many years. We will not let them steal this election from us,” he said.

The results of the machine recount are due by Nov. 15. On Saturday, Trump warned that “we are watching closely.”

Adam Shaw is a reporter covering U.S. and European politics for Fox News.. He can be reached here.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/law...e-being-denied