MY HEART goes out to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. As you are reading this piece, the man President Donald Trump appointed to be his Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary may either have been fired or has resigned, following the barrage of tweets the president has made on Twitter over the past several days that publicly criticized and even humiliated Sessions.
Trump said in his tweets how disappointed he’s been with Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation probing into the alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to meddle in the U.S. presidential election last year.
Sessions was the first Senate Republican who endorsed Trump and has, in fact, been instrumental in winning many conservatives to believe in Trump, whose conservative principles were being questioned when he announced that he was running for president.
Sessions was very much respected in his home state of Alabama for his conservative principles, programs and advocacies. He went on board the Trump train because he wanted to help Trump solve the problem of illegal immigration in the United States — an issue that is very close to many conservative Filipinos in America.
The senator left behind his secure seat to serve the Trump administration as his DOJ Secretary (also known as Attorney General), and has, in the past six months, been earning accolades and support from among his fellow Republicans for being an honest-to-goodness law and order officer who has helped lower the number of illegal immigration to the United States, and has been working hard to implement laws to solve the drug problems. He has been deemed as a defender of the Constitution and the rule of law.
BUT TRUMP, in his recent interview with the New York Times, as well as in a news conference this week said he was disappointed in Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe in March, saying that had he known, he wouldn’t have hired him to be Attorney General.
His recent tweets have revealed that he has lost his amour for his loyal number one supporter and is willing to let go of him. President Trump has labeled him “beleaguered” (troubled, having a lot of difficulties). He also tweeted that Sessions was weak on investigating Hillary Clinton’s crimes and the leaks coming out of the U.S. intelligence community.
BUT why was Trump surprised? Sessions had been forthcoming during the Senate confirmation hearings in January that he would recuse himself from any investigation of Clinton if confirmed because of the comments he previously made during the campaign about Clinton’s use of the email server and her family’s charitable foundation. He explained that this could place his objectivity and impartiality in question.
Trump said that by recusing himself, Sessions was unfair to the president and to the presidency. WHY?
In my opinion, Sessions showed “delicadeza” in deciding to recuse himself from the Russia probe because he was part of the Trump campaign being investigated on after his undisclosed meeting with Russian officials during the campaign. How is that damaging to the presidency or to the Office of the President?
His recusing himself, in fact, has been helping Trump so that there will be no doubt in the investigation which, in fact, should be Trump’s way to prove he has nothing to hide and has not truly been colluding with the Russians as alleged.
Trump’s critics are alleging that the reason why Trump was disappointed in Sessions’ recusal from the Russia probe was because it paved the way for the hiring of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the highly respected former FBI Director, by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to head the independent probe on the Russia connection.
As we read from the news, Mueller has now expanded the probe to include the Trump family’s business and financial ties to Russia.
His critics likewise allege that in firing or letting Sessions go, Trump could now appoint a new DOJ secretary who can fire Mueller (but the law says there needs to be a compelling cause to do this), OR, have this new AG stop the investigation because there was nothing out there, in support of Trump’s labeling this probe as a “witch hunt”.
Trump has to understand that the Department of Justice, despite being under the executive department, is an independent body tasked by the Constitution to seek justice and the rule of law for ALL, and should not let anybody, not even the president, be above the law.
Trump tweeted this week: “It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.”
MR. PRESIDENT, our public officials— both elected and appointed are there to defend the Constitution and NOT you, as a person. Let them do their job.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
