It's easy in the Trump administration's infuriating struggle with the law and the truth to forget how unmoored our nation's chief law enforcement officer is from his job description as attorney general. Yes, the position always has been a political one, an unavoidable consequence of the fact that the president gets to choose who gets to run the Justice Department. But Jeff Sessions isn't even pretending to maintain the patina of independence his predecessors have tried to honor, nor is Sessions making a reasonable show of fighting for you or for me or anyone else who believes that we are in the midst of an existential battle for the survival of integrity and independence in federal law enforcement.

Instead, Sessions insists on defending the man who nominated him, a president whose administration is under investigation for giving aid and comfort to a foreign power, a president who lashed out again this past weekend at the FBI and the Justice Department, itself. Sure, I'll buy the argument that Sessions has chosen to endure these indignities—including Trump's personal diatribes—because he wants to continue to pursue his ideological agenda at the Department of Justice. Whether that makes Sessions courageous or cowardly depends on what you think of that agenda, I suppose, but, even so, the "rule of law" means nothing if it only is used as a cudgel against one's political opponents.

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Shielded from his critics, harassed by Congress for his "evolving" testimony about his own ties to Russian officials, Sessions travels around the country these days delivering "law and order" speeches to friendly audiences of police officers or conservatives in which he bemoans the so-called lawlessness of the Obama administration (whose high officials never had to plead guilty to perjury or obstruction of justice or lying to the FBI). But what former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn just pleaded guilty to is a form of lawlessness. What former Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to earlier this year is a form of lawlessness. What former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort is accused of is a form of lawlessness. How does an attorney general ignore all that in speeches that bemoan the demise of the "rule of law" under the previous regime?

Take last week, for example. When a California jury mustered up the courage to acquit a Mexican national accused of murdering a young woman, Kate Steinle, on a pier in San Francisco—the evidence clearly showed the defendant was not aiming at the victim and that the bullet ricocheted into her—Sessions took the opportunity to press his attack on "sanctuary cities." Yes, the nation's immigration policies led to a scenario where a man who should have been locked up, or in Mexico, was on that pier. Of course what happened next is a tragedy. But "sanctuary cities" weren't responsible for the evidence that jurors saw in that trial. The rule of law, as a former federal prosecutor like Sessions knows, has room for acquittals in high-profile trials where everyone wants to see a conviction. In fact, the rule of law demands such results in cases where emotions outpace evidence.

Public officials, like the rest of us, shouldn’t lie, is all Sessions had to say.

Sessions didn't wait for the sun to set on the Steinle verdict before he weighed in with his political perspective on immigration. No surprise. A prosecutor is almost always going to complain about an acquittal. But contrast Sessions' zeal to interject the Justice Department into the debate over San Francisco's view of immigration enforcement with his notable silence Friday in the wake of the announcement of Flynn's guilty plea. One would think that an attorney general of the United States, who keeps telling his audiences that law enforcement needs more integrity, would be delighted that a public official who lied to the FBI was punished with criminal sanctions. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a more baseline case for the "rule of law" than a case of someone caught lying to the feds.

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But no. That's not the attorney general we have. The attorney general we have wasn't able to muster any pithy comment about Flynn's deal. He'll probably defend his silence on the ground that he's recused from the Russia investigation, but that's not a reasonable excuse. Flynn's guilty plea offered Sessions a perfect opportunity to pipe up and say something about how vital it is for every American to tell the truth when questioned by the police. It offered him a prime chance to remind everyone about how seriously the Justice Department takes perjury and obstruction of justice cases. He could have done this without even referencing special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Public officials, like the rest of us, shouldn’t lie, is all he had to say.

It's the least any of us could expect from our "law-and-order" attorney general. It would have given us the impression that Sessions believes in federal law enforcement even when it comes after his own friends and former colleagues. Contrast Sessions’ silence with the forceful defense of the FBI offered by former attorney general Eric Holder, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and former FBI Director James Comey. The latter, like Sessions, is directly involved in the pending Russia investigation and was still able to stand up for the hard-working women and men at the FBI who deserve more than to be blasted by their president.

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Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI’s reputation is not in “tatters”. It’s composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You’ll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now — Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 3, 2017

The attorney general's Friday silence on Flynn was amplified on Saturday night when he subsequently expressed worry about an erosion of "public trust" in the FBI as soon as news broke that Mueller removed a key FBI agent, part of his investigative team, when that agent was caught canoodling with a colleague and disparaging Trump. That story surely is an embarrassment to Mueller and company and it surely gives ammunition to those who believe his investigation is politically-motivated. But on the sliding scale of "public trust," a quick firing of an agent upon the discovery of his misconduct is hardly more disconcerting than the implosion of the Trump team on Russia. Having been silent on Flynn on Friday, Sessions should have remained so on Saturday.

Sessions' failure to defend the honor and integrity of his own institution, and his apparent disdain for the work of the FBI, reminds us that he is more loyal to Trump than he is to the Constitution. His decision to manipulate perceptions about the "rule of law," invoking it against his political enemies but avoiding mention of it when it would embarrass his political friends, makes him, already, one of the weakest and worst attorneys general in the history of the nation. At a time when America urgently needs strong, independent law enforcement, we have instead, at the very top, another pliant functionary of President Donald Trump

Andrew Cohen Andrew Cohen, a legal analyst and commentator, is a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a senior editor at the Marshall Project.

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