When Donald Trump famously asked F.B.I. director James Comey to kindly drop all inquiries into Michael Flynn, and then fired him when he did not, the president triggered a series of events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation into Russian collusion has now resulted in three indictments and the potential for many more. Thursday afternoon in the White House, Trump indicated that he has learned the dangers of attempting to use the Justice Department as his personal goon squad. “The saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the F.B.I.,” he told WMAL radio host Larry O’Connor. Still, he said he is “very frustrated” that he can’t use law-enforcement agencies to do what he really wants: investigate the Obama administration‘s Uranium One deal, which the right is scrambling to position as “clear evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russian intelligence.”

“I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton with her e-mails and with her dossier, and the kind of money—I don’t know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier . . . which is total phony, fake, fraud and how is it used?” he railed, expressing how “unhappy” he was with the way the justice system is supposed to work. “But you know as president, and I think you understand this, as a president you’re not supposed to be involved in that process.”

There’s a certain irony in the fact that Trump now says he was not supposed to be involved in setting the F.B.I.’s agenda (“Huh, could he be learning?” Benjamin Wittes, a close friend of Comey‘s, tweeted sarcastically). But as he indicated Friday morning, it certainly wasn’t out of respect for the tradition of independent-minded American law enforcement. In fact, if Trump has learned anything at all, it seems to be that while it is improper to order the Justice Department to investigate his political enemies—and illegal to obstruct an ongoing investigation—there’s no law preventing him from tweeting at his embattled attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from the sidelines.

Trump‘s thinly veiled criticism comes as Sessions faces renewed scrutiny for his comments to Congressional investigators that he “didn’t recall” any reference to Russia during his time as a top aide for the Trump campaign. When asked under oath whether Trump campaign surrogates had made contact with Russian agents, Sessions replied, “I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did, and I don’t believe it happened”—a statement directly contradicted by claims foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos made to the F.B.I.

Further accounts have been even more damning. J.D. Gordon, a former Trump campaign adviser, told The New York Times that Sessions was present in a March meeting in which Papadopoulos proposed a meeting between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin. “He went into the pitch right away,” said Gordon, who also attended the meeting. Eventually Sessions shot down the idea, adding “that no one should talk about” it going forward. In light of mounting evidence, a source close to Sessions said on Thursday that the attorney general now claims to remember the meeting. It had slipped his mind, the source said, because the “comments by this Papadopoulos person did not leave a lasting impression.” But the sudden reversal may have come too late for Trump, who seems to be laying the groundwork to distance himself from the attorney general.