Attorney general in hot seat again after new Trump tweet
The president has a history of attacking his attorney general.
— -- President Donald Trump is once again going after Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Twitter, demanding to know why the Justice Department has not done more to investigate President Obama.
Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation? Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Sessions! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2018
In recent days, Trump has repeatedly tried to shift attention to how President Obama handled Russia interference in the 2016 election.
And this is hardly the first time Trump has called out his attorney general on Twitter. Over four days in July, Trump called Sessions "beleaguered," triggering speculation he was about to fire him. Trump said Sessions had taken a "very weak" position on "Hillary Clinton crimes." And later the same day, during a news conference, Trump said he was "disappointed" with Sessions. A day after those comments, Trump fired off a series of tweets criticizing Sessions.
In January, Sessions was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller for four hours, becoming the highest-ranking Trump administration official to be questioned in the Russia investigation, which is also looking into any potential ties between Trump associates and Russian operatives.
After questions were raised about contacts Sessions had with the Russia ambassador - and what he knew about Trump campaign efforts to contact Russians - Sessions recused himself from overseeing the special counsel's investigation.
In July 2017, Trump told the New York Times he would have gone with another choice for attorney general if he'd known that Sessions would recuse himself, calling it "unfair to the president."
“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.