Why Trump won’t fire Sessions

Sessions is under fire for meeting twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States without disclosing it to the Senate during his confirmation hearings. He announced Thursday that he would recuse himself from all investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign.

Democrats were hardly mollified. “Attorney General Sessions is right to recuse himself, but the fact is he should have done so the moment he was sworn in,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “The DOJ regulations that led him to recuse himself existed three weeks ago when I first asked him to do so and were just as dispositive then as they are now.”

Trump could try to appease them by firing Sessions, something Democrats have demanded, but that won’t be easy for him to do. As a Republican senator from Alabama, Sessions was the first important federal elected official to endorse Trump’s presidential campaign. Sessions was also critical in lining up Washington meetings and helping Trump establish relationships inside the national GOP.

Sessions is a much more important figure in Trumpworld than ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn ever was. The administration is layered with his associates. Deputy White House chief of staff Rick Dearborn and senior adviser Stephen Miller were top Sessions staffers.

Trump’s immigration policy, a critical part of his appeal during the primaries and the general election campaign, was shaped substantially by Sessions. Sessions arguably played as big a role in guiding Trump toward nationalism and populism as chief strategist Stephen Bannon.

Trump has stayed loyal to embattled underlings in the past. He stuck by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski amidst simple battery charges. Flynn misled Vice President Pence, but in this situation there is no divided loyalty.

The president expressed “total confidence” in Sessions on Thursday and said he didn’t even think the attorney general needed to recuse himself.

“Jeff Sessions is an honest man,” Trump elaborated in a statement later. “He did not say anything wrong.” He called the criticism of Sessions a “total witch hunt” and a way for Democrats to save face after “losing an election that everyone thought they were supposed to win.”

Sessions has another comparative advantage over Flynn, who left after losing the confidence of Trump when he misinformed Vice President Pence and made him look bad — Sessions’ flub wasn’t nearly so bad, and it’s not clear his testimony was false. Both questions he was asked about meetings with Russia were clearly in the context of the Trump campaign, not whether he had ever had any such contacts in his capacity as a senator. Sessions was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time he met with the Russian ambassador.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., directly asked Sessions about a report detailing a “continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump’s surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.” Sessions replied that he had been “called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign” and didn’t personally have those types of conversations with the Russian government.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also specifically asked Sessions whether he had “been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day.” Sessions’ one-word answer: “No.”

Sessions acknowledged Thursday that he should have mentioned meeting the Russian ambassador twice in other contexts. But so far, nothing has emerged publicly that contradicts what he said originally.

The attorney general retains broad support among Republicans on Capitol Hill, even though lawmakers were unhappy about the revelations, because he is well respected by his former colleagues.

Some Republican strategists say if anything, the GOP is being too hard on Sessions.

“Republicans have got to stop being afraid of their own shadows and falling on their swords prematurely,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “There’s no need to hit the fire alarm too early. They’re kneecapping themselves.”

“My take on this is that those with a tendency to see bad in everything President Trump do see it as a big problem,” added Christian Ferry, a Republican strategist who managed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s presidential campaign. “Others, who have a more open mind, are considering the fact that it is perfectly reasonable for a U.S. senator to have contact with foreign ambassadors in Washington and for that reason, I think are taking a wait-and-see attitude.”

Ferry ran the diplomatic corps program at the 2012 Republican convention and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was among the many foreign diplomats who participated. “The ambassadors and other country representatives met with numerous Romney campaign and GOP officials during that week,” he said. “I think any criticism of Sen. Sessions meeting with a group that included Ambassador Kislyak as part of that program at the 2016 convention is really absurd.”

“This is a straight communications battle,” O’Connell said. “When Van Jones and Chris Wallace are raving about Trump’s speech, there’s no need to hand the news cycle back to the Democrats.”

That kind of thinking is likely to resonate with Trump. President Barack Obama stuck by Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch in the face of controversy.

Expect Trump to do the same for Sessions, at least for now.