Two key Republican senators have just signaled that they’re okay with President Donald Trump firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions — definitely after the midterms, and maybe even earlier.
In an interview with Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News published Thursday, current Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is potentially positioned to take over the Judiciary Committee in 2019, each indicated the Senate’s schedule might have an opening for confirming a new attorney general.
“The president’s entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that’s qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,” Graham said. “Clearly, Attorney General Sessions doesn’t have the confidence of the president.”
Firing Sessions would be the first step to shutting down special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the relationship between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, and Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Sessions himself cannot fire Mueller because he recused himself from the Department of Justice investigation into Trump and Russia — however, a new Attorney General would not be subject to that recusal and would be able to direct the Mueller investigation or shutter it.
However, current Senate Judiciary Chair Grassley indicated to Bloomberg that he would have time to take up another nomination this fall. “I do have time for hearings on nominees that the president might send up here that I didn’t have last year,” he said.
Trump for his part continues to publicly criticize his own attorney general — on Thursday morning, he complained to Trump’s Ainsley Earhardt that Sessions “never took control of the Justice Department.” In apparent response, Sessions made an unusual public statement Thursday insisting “the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”
All of this adds up to indicators that Sessions’s time in the AG office could be winding down — and that would leave a clear path to shutting Mueller down. READ MORE:
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