WASHINGTON — President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions a day after midterm elections brought control of the House back to Democrats, setting up what may become the most serious constitutional crisis in Washington since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.

Trump carried through on his long-rumored plan to dump Sessions, whom he has never forgiven for recusing himself from the FBI investigation of Trump 2016 campaign connections to Russia, which set the stage for appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump also designated a loyalist, Sessions’ chief of staff Matthew Whitaker, as acting attorney general overseeing Mueller. Whitaker, who has openly criticized the Mueller probe, took the reins from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - himself the object of Trump’s Twitter scorn along with Sessions.

In a letter to Trump released Wednesday, Sessions wrote: “At your request, I am submitting my resignation.”

The abrupt switch prompted calls from Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and other Democrats to insulate Mueller from political interference

“Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr. Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general,” Schumer said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill as news of Sessions’ departure was breaking, Schumer called the firing “very suspect.”

Whitaker “should not able to end it, limit it, or interfere with Mueller going forward and doing what he thinks is the right thing,” Schumer said. “We would hope if there’s a constitutional crisis, our Republican colleagues would join us in thwarting the president from creating that crisis. We’ll see.”

While enough House seats changed hands Tuesday to give Democrats control of the House for the first time since 2011, Republicans expanded their control of the Senate by two seats, with results in a few races pending.



Without a Senate majority, Schumer’s options may be limited. But Democratic control of the House as of January 2019 gives the party a barricade of sorts that Trump may find difficult to penetrate should he and Whitaker choose to undercut Mueller.

Another New York Democrat, Rep. Gerald Nadler, whose district includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, is in line to become chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee. Nadler on Wednesday pledged to protect Mueller.

“The firing of Jeff Sessions will be investigated and people will be held accountable,” Nadler said in a statement. “This must begin immediately and if not, a Democratic Congress will make it a priority in January.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who handily won re-election to a second full Senate term, tweeted: "The Senate must step up to protect the special counsel immediately. ... The American people deserve answers about Russian interference in our Democracy."

The firing capped more than a year of Trump castigating Sessions, a former Alabama senator who had been one of Trump’s earliest and most vocal Senate supporters, and he was a stalwart proponents of Trump's agenda as he pushed forward Trump's conservative policies on crime, sentencing, immigration and civil rights.

Yet in August, Trump tweeted that Sessions was “scared stiff and missing in action.” Sessions responded by saying: "While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. “

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Whitaker has not been shy about stating in public that Trump could rightly fire Sessions and appoint an acting attorney general to squelch Muller.

"I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn't fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt," Whitaker said during a CNN interview last year.

And in an op-ed for CNN, Whitaker said: "Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing."