Last week I talked about Donald Trump all but firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with both Sens. Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley giving Trump tacit permissions to fire him after the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was wrapped up. But it seems Trump's true cabinet -- FOX News hosts and right-wing pundit sites -- want Sessions's head on a pike now, and are telling Trump that he needs to make his move as soon as possible.
“It’s clear Jeff Sessions is more concerned with his career than the good of America. That said, it’s high time President Trump fires his ineffective Attorney General,” Eric Bolling, a close Trump friend and a former Fox News personality, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “I would NOT, however, fire [special counsel Robert] Mueller. For no other reason than political optics.”
He was hardly the only one calling for Sessions’ head for his alleged failure to protect Trump due to the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia probe. According to several people who speak regularly to Trump, the president still keeps polling his inner circle and allies for their take on what he should do about Sessions, all the while highlighting what he views as Sessions’ weaknesses, failings, and annoying qualities.
And nowhere is Trump’s fury on this better reflected and projected than on his preferred conservative media behemoth.
For her Labor Day weekend episode of Justice With Judge Jeanine, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro dedicated her opening monologue to personally and professionally trashing Trump’s attorney general as a witless “shill” and as a pathetic enabler of supposed “corruption by the Democrats.”
Her overarching message to Sessions was: Nobody likes you, nerd.
“What don’t you get? Have you no self-esteem, self-regard, self-respect? Where is your dignity? Why would you stay in a job where you’re not wanted?… And why do you continue to stay?” Pirro said in her lengthy “Opening Statement” on the program. “You’re so clueless you don’t even know you’re being used. You don’t even know you’re nothing but a shill. In fact, the only constituency that wants you is the ‘Deep State’… Are you proud of yourself?”
“Are you kidding? All of America knows the DOJ continues to be to be influenced by politics," she added. "You need to do one of two things: Resign immediately, because you are not wanted. Or put on your big boy pants and be a real attorney general.”
Pirro is a longtime friend and ally of Trump’s, and she had even been interviewedduring the Trump presidential transition for the job of deputy attorney general. The president watches her weekend show routinely, and Pirro stands in the same Trumpworld echelon as someone like Sean Hannity, another Fox star who doubles as a confidant and top outside adviser to Trump.
This seems to me to be a coordinated move in order to get Sessions to resign, by application of a hint fired out of railgun. The plan of course is to neuter the Mueller probe, and make sure its conclusions never reach the light of day. Rudy Giuliani gave away that game on Monday.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that the administration may claim executive privilege to block Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from releasing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report when the investigation is finished, according to a New Yorker report.
Giuliani claims that President Donald Trump’s original legal team—which has undergone many mutations since—cut a deal with Mueller that that the White House can object to public dissemination of information from the probe on the grounds of executive privilege.
When asked if the White House is likely to invoke this clause, Giuliani was frank: “I’m sure we will.”
And with Kavanaugh as the fifth vote on SCOTUS even if the Democrats with back the House, Trump then buries the report permanently, the GOP in Congress does nothing, and the investigation vanishes.
Greg Sargent says this is all part of the plan to bury the Mueller report.
Could this work? On Tuesday, I spoke to Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. The short answer is: Probably not, but there are scenarios under which it could have some success, and a lot may turn on whether Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress.
Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller is supposed to provide a “confidential” report explaining his conclusions to the attorney general — or, in this case, to Rosenstein, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. Rosenstein, not Mueller, is then supposed to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees with an “explanation” for the Justice Department’s decision to conclude the investigation.
This explanation can be released publicly if the Justice Department official overseeing the probe decides it would be “in the public interest.” In this scenario, Rosenstein would have a great deal of discretion to decide how much to put in that report — he could keep it very brief, or supply a lot of detail.
Kent tells me the White House could try to override the regulations and stop the report’s release to Congress — or at least part of it — by claiming executive privilege covers certain information in it. Kent says most of the information in the report probably would not plausibly be covered by any such claim, but that Trump might try to assert that much of it is, anyway.
And should Rosenstein object, he's fired or replaced, and the new overseer of the Mueller probe refuses to release the report at all. The only way it happens is if Congress subpoenas the report, which will never happen unless the Dems can take back the House or Senate in November.
It's possible then, very possible in fact, that Trump may not actually fire Robert Mueller, but simply erase the report. Either way, Jeff Sessions will not be Attorney General in 2019, that's a 100% certainty at this point.
He may not be Attorney General by the end of the month.
Stay tuned.
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