WASHINGTON (AP) —President Donald Trump’s extraordinary public denouncement of Attorney General Jeff Sessions reflected a long-simmering frustration with one of his staunchest allies, but was not a calculated attempt to force Sessions from the Cabinet, according to two Trump advisers.
For weeks, the president has seethed about Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the federal investigation into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia during last year’s election. On Wednesday, Trump told The New York Times that he would never have appointed Sessions to the post if he had known the former Alabama senator would make that decision.
“Sessions should have never recused himself,” Trump told the paper, “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.”
The White House notably made no effort to walk back Trump’s comments or display confidence in the attorney general. Instead, the two Trump advisers acknowledged that the president’s public comments largely reflected what they have heard him say about Sessions privately.
The advisers insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the president’s thinking. The Justice Department declined to comment on the president’s remarks.
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