Attorney General Jeff Sessions still stands by his decision to recuse himself in the Russia investigation — despite President Trump's repeated attacks on him for doing so. "I think I did the right thing," the attorney general told Time, appearing on the magazine's latest cover. "I don't think the attorney general can ask everybody else in the department to follow the rules if the attorney general doesn't follow them."

It's at least the third time Sessions has made that statement publicly this year. He also defended his recusal from the FBI's investigation into Russian election meddling and any ties to the Trump campaign earlier this month in a speech to the Federalist Society at Georgetown Law School, and in a February interview with Fox News.

Mr. Trump has blasted Sessions for recusing himself, even telling the New York Times in a July 2017 interview he wouldn't have named Sessions attorney general if he'd known he would step back from the probe.

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"So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself," Mr. Trump told the Times. "I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I can't, you know, I'm not going to take you.' It's extremely unfair, and that's a mild word, to the president."

Mr. Trump has also berated Sessions for, as the president sees it, not aggressively pursuing his former opponent Hillary Clinton.

But while the ousters of other officials like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin are announced on Twitter, Sessions remains in the Trump administration.