President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.
Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. (our emphasis)Again, what does an innocent person need to be protected from, he asked rhetorically. Why would an innocent person want to do this, too:
The New York Times has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F.B.I. director. It was not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators knew about this episode.
Mr. Mueller has also been examining a false statement that the president reportedly dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that Trump campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Mr. Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice. [snip]
Two days after Mr. Comey’s testimony, an aide to Mr. Sessions approached a Capitol Hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the F.B.I. director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. (our emphasis)Keep in mind this is several months after evil elf Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III supposedly recused himself from the Russia investigation, being led by then- FBI Director James Comey. A more rotten, dishonest cast of characters (cut from Rump's cloth) would be hard to imagine... and we're haven't even mentioned the knuckle- draggers on Capitol Hill that are desperate to protect this dysfunctional, loathsome, dangerous regime (see below).
BONUS: Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog notes an effort by one lawyer in the White House to save Rump from himself (unsuccessfully).
BONUS II: James Fallows says what we know to be true -- that the revelations in Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" come as no surprise to those who, were they responsible country- before- party Republicans, would do something about Rump, but for their own malicious, twisted reasons have not. (h/t Mock Paper Scissors)
BONUS III: Michelle Goldberg echoes the same view - "Everyone in Trumpworld knows he's an idiot."
