WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”
In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “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,” Mr. Trump said.
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the president also accused James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Mr. Trump criticized both the acting F.B.I. director who has been filling in since Mr. Comey’s dismissal and the deputy attorney general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia. Mr. Trump never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mr. Mueller, nor would he outline circumstances under which he might do so. But he left open the possibility as he expressed deep grievance over an investigation that has taken a political toll in the six months since he took office.
Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”
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“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “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’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”
Mr. Trump also faulted Mr. Sessions for his testimony during Senate confirmation hearings when Mr. Sessions said he had not met with any Russians even though he had met at least twice with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak. “Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers,” the president said. “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t.”
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Trump said he wouldn't have appointed Jeff Sessions if he'd known Sessions would recuse himself on Russia https://t.co/eVsjUYaO5v
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 19, 2017
Trump warns Mueller not to look into Trump family finances unrelated to Russia — and won't rule out firing him https://t.co/xWQnI83Kb9 pic.twitter.com/DjDPbC4kED
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 19, 2017
How does Jeff Sessions continue as AG? Or is that the point — is Trump sending him a public message to quit?
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 19, 2017
My takeaway from the NYT interview, in which he mows down Sessions–Sessions!–is that Putin remains the only ally Trump has never betrayed.
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) July 20, 2017
Well Jeff, no good deed goes unpunished. Don’t worry you won’t be all alone under that bus.
Trump can never accept responsibility for anything he does. He always has to point the finger elsewhere.
“Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel ”
Uh no. Think again and look in the mirror. It was your stupid decision to fire Comey and then admit that you were thinking about that Russian thing when you fired him.
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