Thursday on the Senate floor, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) warned President Donald Trump not to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions “because he’s not executing his job as a political hack.”

Sasse said, “It’s been a strange couple of hours. Lots and lots of goofy talk about firing the attorney general. I would just like to say in public what I’ve been saying to my colleagues in a message I just communicated to the president of the United States. It would be a very, very, very bad idea to fire the attorney general because he’s not executing his job as a political hack. That is not the job of the attorney general. The attorney general’s job is to be faithful to the Constitution and to the rule of law. ”

He continued, “I think everybody in this body knows that Jeff Sessions has been executing his job in a way faithful to his oath of office, to the Constitution, and trying to defend the rule of law. I think Jeff Sessions’ statement today that the U.S. Department of Justice is filled with honorable, dispassionate career prosecutors who execute their job in ways that the American people should be proud of is indisputably true. What he said is something that basically everybody in this body knows and agrees with, and yet bizarrely there are people in this body now talking like the attorney general will be fired, should be fired. I’m not sure how to interpret the comments of the last couple of hours but I guess I would just like to say, as a member of the Judiciary Committee and as a member of this body, I find it really difficult to envision any circumstance where I would vote to confirm a successor to Jeff Sessions if he is fired because he’s executing his job rather than choosing to act as a partisan hack. I think everybody in this body knows that Jeff Sessions is doing his job honorably and the attorney general of the United States should not be fired for acting honorably and for being faithful to the rule of law.”

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