“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.

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Trump's statement is remarkable for a few reasons. The first is that he's publicly splitting with his own attorney general, who as a senator was his earliest supporter alongside many skeptical Senate Republicans. The second is that Trump's version of events is a little odd; Sessions's recusal came after it was discovered that he failed to report contacts with Russia's ambassador during the ensuing confirmation process. Sessions said his recusal was simply because he served on the Trump campaign, but he faced pressure largely because of the undisclosed ambassador contacts.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that Trump has now repeatedly attacked the people tasked with overseeing federal law enforcement's Russia probe. Five people have had a leading role in that regard, and Trump has now attacked all of them.

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Trump, most notably, fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May and later admitted the Russia investigation was on his mind when he did it. “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,” Trump told NBC News's Lester Holt. “It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won.”

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Trump has also sought to cast doubt upon the special counsel who was appointed following Sessions's recusal, former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, by pointing to reports that Mueller has hired lawyers who contributed to Democrats. “You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people!” Trump tweeted last month. Trump's surrogates have joined in that questioning of Mueller's neutrality.

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who assumed oversight of the investigation after Sessions's recusal, was the one who appointed Mueller. And Trump apparently hasn't been happy with him either. Shortly after the tweet criticizing the team assembled by Mueller, Trump cited the fact that Rosenstein had sent him a memo at Trump's request pointing to Comey's failures as FBI director. “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!” Trump tweeted. While Rosenstein at the time wasn't technically investigating Trump himself, it was pretty clear he was the one Trump referenced.

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