President Trump complained Tuesday that the Russia investigation would never have been launched at all if he had a “real” attorney general in place to stop it.
“If we had a real Attorney General, this Witch Hunt would never have been started! Looking at the wrong people,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. His tweet also quoted Fox News host Gregg Jarrett, who said the Justice Department’s goal under former President Barack Obama was to “clear Hillary Clinton and FRAME Donald Trump for things he didn’t do.”
[Related: Trump calls on Jeff Sessions to end Russia probe ‘right now’]
“They were all in on it, clear Hillary Clinton and FRAME Donald Trump for things he didn’t do.” Gregg Jarrett on @foxandfriends If we had a real Attorney General, this Witch Hunt would never have been started! Looking at the wrong people.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2018
The president has complained repeatedly about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election cycle.
When Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, that prompted Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the Russia investigation. Trump has said if he knew Sessions would recuse himself, he would have “put a different attorney general in.”
Sessions decided to extricate himself from the Justice Department’s investigation in March 2017 after consulting with Justice Department officials. The president reportedly asked Sessions to reverse his decision at a dinner at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in March shortly after Sessions made his decision, but the attorney general refused.
The president chose Sessions as his nominee for attorney general shortly after he defeated Clinton, and called Sessions “a world-class legal mind.”
“Jeff is greatly admired by legal scholars and virtually everyone who knows him,” the president said in a statement regarding Sessions’ nomination.
