Thread: When Sessions recused himself, he was doing his job, Mr. President

When Sessions recused himself, he was doing his job, Mr. President[COLOR=#999999 !important]

SUNDAY , JULY 23, 2017 - 5:00 AM

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[COLOR=#999999 !important]Image by: AP[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#999999 !important]In this July 12, 2017, photo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks in Las Vegas. President Donald Trump says he never would have appointed Sessions as attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation. Trump made the extraordinary statement about Sessions in an interview with The New York Times Wednesday, July 19. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

E. KENT WINWARD, special to the Standard-Examiner


This week, President Trump did an interview with The New York Times, covering a range of topics. But one thing he said jumped out at me, largely because I live and work within the legal system.

What struck me as I read the interview? His comments about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from any investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Most people are probably familiar with the word “recuse,” but lack the strong reaction I have to it. After years of practicing law, “recuse” is a word that rings like bells for me, reverberating across three-plus decades of conflict with judges, prosecutors and other attorneys.

• RELATED: “Trump blasts Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe”
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Sessions heads the U.S. Department of Justice, which basically means he is the lawyer charged with representing the United States. I remember the trepidation I felt as a young attorney when meeting with a new client. I can only imagine what it would be like to have your new client be the entire United States.

The attorney general of the United States is entrusted with upholding and enforcing the laws of this country. But it’s also a symbolic role because the attorney general’s job is, in part, to facilitate faith in our legal system.

If a potential client comes into my office and there is a conflict of interest, I simply don’t take the case. If a case comes before a judge and certain criteria are met, the judge, under Utah law, is required to recuse himself. Judges often recuse themselves if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest or a hint of impropriety.

Part of the power of the legal system is avoiding the suggestion of bias.

A couple years ago, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes recused himself from defending Senate Bill 54 in court. Senate Bill 54 was the "Count My Vote" legislation that allowed potential candidates to bypass the political party and the caucus system and get on the primary ballot by gathering signatures. Reyes had been a vocal opponent of "Count My Vote." After it passed, the law was challenged in court by the Utah Republican Party.

Reyes recused himself from the case because he had opposed the law publicly. In a statement that "the law would be fully defended in court," (it was and is still the law in Utah), the Chief Civil and Criminal Deputies of the Utah Attorney General’s office stated, “[R]ealizing the potential perception of bias, he did what a good attorney should. His was not a political decision; it was an ethical one and made with sound judgment.”

I can’t help but contrast that statement with Trump’s comments about Sessions’ recusal: “So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. 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 can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.' It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word to the president. So he recuses himself.”

Trump’s comments sound like a disgruntled employer: “I gave this guy the job and now he won’t do it.” Except that the job Sessions was given, by its very definition, requires loyalty not to the man who appointed him, but to the laws of the United States.

In answer to the president’s question, “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself?” You take the job, and if it becomes necessary, you recuse yourself when that is your job. During Sessions’ confirmation hearing he denied having any meetings with officials from the Russian government during the campaign. About a month later, a news story broke that Sessions had actually met twice with the Russian ambassador.

The next day, Sessions issued a statement, recusing himself from anything to do with the investigation into Russian involvement in the presidential campaign. In the statement, he referred to his confirmation hearing on the subject of what he would do if his impartiality could be reasonably questioned. He'd testified that he would defer to the Department of Justice’s ethics officials, which is exactly what he did. Based on those consultations, Sessions recused himself from involvement in any investigation into the presidential elections.

The attorney general’s job is to avoid even the potential perception of bias and impropriety. Sessions' actions were not only appropriate, they were the actions of an ethical legal professional who used good judgement and made the right choice by recusing himself.

I hope this clarifies your confusion, President Trump. Sessions recused himself because he was doing his job — the job you appointed him to do, which is to act ethically and uphold the laws of the United States.

E. Kent Winward is an Ogden attorney. Twitter: @KentWinward.


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http://www.standard.net/Guest-Commentary/2017/07/23/Trump-Sessions-NYT-Russia-recusal-Utah-Sean-Reyes-laws-column-Winward?printFriendly=201707230054

Trump’s comments sound like a disgruntled employer: “I gave this guy the job and now he won’t do it.” Except that the job Sessions was given, by its very definition, requires loyalty not to the man who appointed him, but to the laws of the United States.

The problem we have here is a failure to communicate. There is nothing to do with the investigation by Congress or the FBI/Justice Department into the allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential Election that has anything to do with the "laws of the United States."

Sessions did the right thing





BY TRACY MATHESON/JULY 20, 2017/ POLITICS

In a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the former Director of the United States Office of Government Ethics defended Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Walter Shaub said, “I need to defend Attorney General Sessions here because he did the right thing.”

“We told DOJ if there’s any chance that he’s part of the class of persons being looked at in this investigation, he must recuse.”

Shaub defended Sessions after President Donald Trump said in an interview with The New York Times that he would not have nominated Sessions if he knew the attorney general would recuse himself from the federal investigations into Russia’s election interference.

Trump told the newspaper, “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.”

Shaub, who left his post at the Government Ethics office this week, claimed that the problem with the White House ethics program is the tone that the president set by not divesting from his business interests.

“It starts with a little thing like the president not divesting his financial interests, which sets a tone from the top that goes cascading down through the executive branch,” Shaub said. “And you wind up in a place where you have a president criticizing a law enforcement official for doing the right thing and staying out of an investigation in which he may or may not be a target. But because there’s any potential at all, they’re going to err on the side of being cautious.”

In January, Trump announced that he would relinquish his businesses to his two oldest sons in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

http://dennismichaellynch.com/sessions-right-thing/

He did the right thing according to Obamaites, Hillary Shrills, DemoQuacks and the CORRUPT MEDIA. For the rest of us, not so much. Everyone makes decisions, right or wrong, like them or not. There will be lots of decisions throughout this Presidency that will be controversial and disputed. Fixing a country and draining the swamp aren't easy tasks. Draining the swamp in the Justice Department probably needed to be cleaned out before any major decisions were made.

Hey, can Sessions just withdraw his recusal? That's what I'd do. I say, after all these months, there is no evidence whatsoever of any "collusion" with the Russians, no evidence of any illegal meddling beyond a possible hack job which has nothing to do with the Trump campaign, and no meat on the bones for any possible ethics or conflict of interest issues.


That's the ticket .... just withdraw the damn recusal because there was nothing to recuse from to begin with.

Simple.

by THE EDITORS March 2, 2017 10:35 PM

The attorney general did the right thing in recusing himself.

Congressional Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, are calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign following reports that he was in touch with Russia’s ambassador twice during last year’s presidential campaign. Pointing to Sessions’s failure to disclose these contacts during his recent confirmation hearings, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, among others, is accusing him of lying under oath.

The available facts suggest otherwise. According to the Justice Department, the former Alabama senator met briefly with a group of ambassadors following his address at an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation in July, amid the Republican National Convention. In a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Sessions acknowledged also meeting with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak privately last September. Sessions maintains that he met Kislyak in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and that some of his senior aides were present. Meetings between senators and diplomatic officials are, of course, common: Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, who attacked Sessions on Twitter for the sit-down, has in the past publicized multiple visits of her own with the Russian ambassador.

During his confirmation hearings, Sessions was grilled by Minnesota senator Al Franken. Citing recent reports that “there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government,” Franken asked Sessions: “If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” Sessions responded: “I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” In a follow-up questionnaire, Vermont senator Patrick Leahy asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Sessions answered: “No.”

It’s clear now that Sessions’s response to Franken was inaccurate, and the whole episode could have been avoided had Sessions been clearer up front. But the context makes it fairly clear that Sessions was denying coordination with the Russians about the presidential election. There is no indication that Sessions willfully misled the Congress; based on what we know so far, Democrats’ perjury accusations are fantasy.

Nonetheless, the cloud now around Sessions is unlikely to dissipate quickly. Given an ongoing FBI probe into various Trump associates with apparent links to the Russian government (former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former advisers Carter Page and Roger Stone), and Michael Flynn’s recent departure from the administration after he misled White House officials about his own contacts with Kislyak, there is reason to take seriously concerns about Russia’s attempts to influence last year’s election and the new administration.

That is why a thorough congressional investigation is in order. As we’ve said before, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which have extensive oversight powers, ought to conduct a fair, transparent, and expeditious inquiry into the allegations against the White House, and also into the source of the illicit leaks that are responsible for many of those allegations. Sessions’s contacts with the Russian ambassador ought to be a part of this probe. This is a political matter, and it is incumbent upon the people’s representatives to investigate.

In the meantime, Sessions has rightly recused himself from any Justice Department investigations into the Trump team’s links to Moscow. Government officials ought to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Given that that standard has been honored mainly in the breach over the past eight years — especially in the Justice Department — Sessions’s decision is a marked improvement on the conduct of his most recent predecessors.

Since his nomination to serve as attorney general, Jeff Sessions has been subjected to a deluge of partisan attacks, almost all of which have been meritless. There is little reason to think that this one will prove different. But Congress should do its job, and find out more about this episode and especially the larger Russian controversy.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ia-controversy

Sessions needs to reverse the recusal and start running the Department of Justice full-steam ahead. There was and has proven since to be nothing to recuse from. Just make an announcement tomorrow that effect July 26, 2017, "I hereby withdraw my recusal from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential Election due to lack of fact-based cause for it to begin with." Take no questions, give no answers, say nothing more. Instead, you do digging into that swamp in the FBI and factions of the US Justice Department that created this hoax to begin with. National security, foreign relations and peace with Russia are on the line here and we don't fund a Department of Justice to pander to Snowflakes who can't get over the fact they lost an election.

Judy wrote (excerpt):

He did the right thing according to Obamaites, Hillary Shrills, DemoQuacks and the CORRUPT MEDIA. For the rest of us, not so much.

Absolutely not true! Many Republicans also called for his recusal.

Deleted by me.

Originally Posted by MW

Judy wrote (excerpt):



Absolutely not true! Many Republicans also called for his recusal.

Oh, yes, that's true, that's why I said for the rest of us, not so much. Even among the rest of us, we have some dim bulbs too. Never claimed otherwise. We have Republicans who support the DreamAct, who hate on Russia and can't suck enough of Mexico's hind teat, who prefer foreign labor to American Workers, who like free trade and closed manufacturing facilities and unemployed poverty-stricken US citizens, who claim they support limited government, low taxes and Medicaid Expansion Forever, and call Sessions a racist. But the last time I checked, those are the stupid people destroying our country that some of us call Swamp Rats. i. e., the Establishment.