Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on Jeff Sessions, one of his earliest supporters in Washington, saying he had been treated "very unfairly" by his attorney general.

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, the President said he never would have appointed Mr Sessions to the post had he known he would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.

Mr Trump said his attorney general's decision to recuse himself from all matters related to Russia was "very unfair to the president."

"Sessions should have never recused himself," Mr 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."