The Senate Judiciary Committee spent weeks preparing questions for Attorney General Jeff Sessions on his evolving recollections of his 2016 contacts with Russia’s ambassador; on his sort-of invocation of executive privilege to evade answering questions about the firing of F.B.I. Director James Comey; and on his bashing of Chicago as a “lawless” sanctuary city. Then, in the hours immediately before Sessions’s public testimony last week, came rumblings of a troubling new bit of line-crossing by his boss, the president: word was circulating that Donald Trump had been personally interviewing candidates for the United States attorney jobs in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Sessions was safely back in his office by the time CNN and Politico confirmed the particulars—but annoyed senators are following up. Today, as part of a series of written questions, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee’s longest-serving member, demanded to know whether Sessions was present for any of the interviews—and whether Trump’s legal worries are connected to the meetings.

The attorney general’s replies are not likely to end the controversy. Top federal prosecutors are normally confirmed by a simple, low-key Senate vote. Thanks to Trump’s intervention, though, whomever he ends up nominating in New York could very well face rare confirmation hearings, in which he or she would be grilled about the content of the apparently unprecedented White House conversations. “If anybody has met with the president, that’s going to make for a lengthy hearing,” said Richard W. Painter, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer during President George W. Bush’s second term and is now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. “‘Who approached you from the White House? What did they say?’ I don’t think Senator [Al] Franken is going to sit on his hands. I’m going to encourage him to ask some questions.”

“These are individuals that the President nominates and the Senate confirms under Article II of the Constitution,” said a White House spokesperson in an e-mail. “We realize Senate Democrats would like to reduce this President’s constitutional powers, but he and other Presidents before him and after may talk to individuals nominated to positions within the Executive Branch.”

Trump met with Jessie Liu before nominating her as D.C.’s federal prosecutor in June, and he more recently chatted up Geoffrey Berman and Ed McNally, the leading contenders for New York’s Southern and Eastern Districts, which cover Manhattan and Brooklyn. There is no indication that the president has taken such an interest in the 45 other U.S. attorneys he has nominated in other parts of the country. “At the end of the day, these are presidential appointments,” said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who co-chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. “But this is an unusual president, and there’s always an extra layer of questions we have to think through. Why would he be talking to candidates for U.S. attorney in those jurisdictions?”

Warner is being wisely cautious until he looks more deeply into the matter. But Trump’s motives seem pretty plain. Washington and New York are the places where the president, his businesses, and his actual and political families are most likely to face legal jeopardy. New York’s Southern District is probing possible money laundering by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. New York’s Eastern District is examining the use of an investment-for-immigration program by Kushner Companies, which is owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (Manafort and Kushner Companies have denied any wrongdoing.)