Analysis: The president’s public anger at one of his early supporters is rooted in Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation – to Trump, a personal betrayal

Donald Trump’s rage toward his attorney general has been simmering since the evening four months ago when Jeff Sessions left the president not just politically exposed but – to Trump, just as bad – also looking foolish and powerless.

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Trump and his press secretary had spent 2 March publicly pooh-poohing the notion that Sessions should step aside from oversight of justice department inquiries into Russian interference with the 2016 election, which US intelligence agencies say was aimed at helping Trump.



“There’s nothing to recuse himself from,” Sean Spicer told Fox News that morning, as Democrats insisted Sessions, the Trump campaign’s first and loudest supporter in the Senate, faced a conflict of interest.

“I don’t think so,” Trump said at an event that afternoon, repeating: “I don’t think so at all.”



A few hours later, Sessions called a press conference to announce that he was recusing himself.



The attorney general’s decision was in keeping with justice department precedent and an assurance he had given senators during his confirmation process: that he and his senior officials would discuss removing him from any matter “where I believed my impartiality might reasonably be questioned”.



It was, moreover, politically necessary, following the explosive revelation a day earlier that Sessions had in fact met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the campaign, before falsely telling senators under oath that he’d had no contact with Russian officials. Pressure on Sessions was mounting.



But to Trump – demanding of absolute loyalty, ignorant of constitutional checks and unconcerned with ethical propriety – the recusal was a personal betrayal. It also gave a new sense of gravity to the Russia inquiry that he was busily dismissing on Twitter as a witch-hunt by sore-loser Democrats.



Most seriously for Trump’s political future, the recusal removed immediate control of the Russia investigation from the hands of Trump’s own circle. To the dismay of the White House, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein – overseeing the Russia saga in lieu of Sessions – proceeded to appoint Robert Mueller, a formidable former FBI director, as a special counsel in charge of the inquiry.



Over the past week, Trump’s anger has boiled over.



The president was furious at media reports that Mueller was expanding his inquiries to take in Trump’s controversial business dealings and years of personal tax returns, which he has steadfastly refused to make public, bucking a decades-old norm for US presidential candidates.



Trump used an interview with the New York Times to lash out at his own attorney general, claiming the recusal was “very unfair”, and declaring that he would not have given Sessions the job if he had known the attorney general would step aside on Russia.



Then came the tweets. On Monday morning, Trump asked why America’s “beleaguered AG” had not focused his attention on the misdeeds of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s former Democratic opponent. Then he declined to invite Sessions, a former Eagle Scout, along with other former scouts in his cabinet to his speech at the National Scout Jamboree.

Early on Tuesday, Trump intensified his assault, accusing Sessions of having been “VERY weak” on Clinton and leaks to the media. Nine minutes later, he directly accused the acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, of corruption. Garbling a reference to a donation McCabe’s wife received from groups associated with a Clinton ally for a Virginia state senate campaign, Trump falsely said McCabe had taken “$700,000 from H for wife”.

Trump appears to view the justice department’s typical demonstration of independence from the White House as insubordination. In the Times interview, he falsely asserted that the FBI director only began reporting to the attorney general “out of courtesy” during the Nixon era – the implication being that no longer needed to be so. Trump’s nominee to take over the job, Christopher Wray, has promised autonomy.

So what now? The president’s outbursts have raised concerns that he intends to remove Sessions and appoint someone willing to fire Mueller, ending the troublesome criminal investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, which has consumed the first six months of his presidency.



Three potential scenarios were outlined elegantly on Tuesday by Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the University of Texas.

Trump could fire Sessions and promote Rosenstein to the top job temporarily, in line with justice department rules of succession and an order earlier this year by Trump himself. Yet since startling legal commentators by supporting Trump’s dismissal of the FBI director, James Comey, Rosenstein has shown no sign of being the kind of patsy Trump seems to desire.

Rosenstein, too, came in for abuse from Trump in the New York Times interview. The president in effect accused Rosenstein – a Republican who comes from Pennsylvania – of being a closet Democrat from Baltimore, where Rosenstein once served as US attorney for Maryland.



Trump would no doubt like to replace Sessions with a new loyalist, such as the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But such an appointment would need to be approved by the Senate, which is likely to demand an assurance of non-interference with Mueller’s Russia inquiry. According to Vladeck, Trump could attempt to use a little-used legal provision to move elsewhere in government a senior official who was already confirmed by senators.

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Most feasibly – and most alarmingly to his opponents – Trump may be able to appoint anyone he chooses as attorney general until January 2019 once the Senate breaks for its summer recess next month. The US president is empowered under the constitution to “fill up all vacancies” during the recess. When Barack Obama tried to do the same with other positions, the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell kept the chamber in session with token announcements each morning even after senators had gone home for their vacations. It is not clear whether he would do the same to stop a Republican president.



One thing remains to Sessions’ advantage. The president’s online bullying of the attorney general is only the clearest example of a tendency to publicly trash members of his team who fall out of favour, rather than address their shortcomings or remove them from their jobs.

Leaks promising peril for senior White House advisers such as Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon have repeatedly come to nothing. Spicer, who faced even worse, eventually quit. When he dismissed Comey – after more Twitter abuse – Trump could not bring himself to call, and instead had his bodyguard deliver a letter.



Trump has long claimed to be the smartest guy in business. He built a political career around a tedious catchphrase about his willingness to fire losers. Yet he has frequently shown himself to be incapable of effective management and too cowardly to actually terminate someone’s job in real life.

Sessions will hope it is enough to save his skin.

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