Is Jeff Sessions on his way out? That would be a reasonable interpretation of White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s cautious response to a question during Tuesday’s press briefing. Asked whether President Donald Trump still has “confidence” in his attorney general, Spicer said, “I have not had that discussion with him.”
Then there’s a report Tuesday evening from ABC News claiming that Sessions spoke with the president about offering his resignation in “recent weeks— which the New York Times confirmed. (Trump, Maggie Haberman reports, declined to accept Sessions’s resignation.) That offer reportedly came as tensions have grown between Trump and Sessions. The Times previously reported a growing discontent between the two men stemming from the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. That investigation has since been taken up by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, at the request of Sessions’s deputy, Rod Rosenstein.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the ABC report, referring to it as a “palace intrigue story.” But the issues are more serious than office gossip, particularly if another Tuesday Times scoop—that former FBI director James Comey told Sessions in February he did not want to be left alone with the president—is true. A Sessions resignation, just weeks after Trump fired Comey, would raise more questions about whether the president tried to quell any investigation into Russian meddling.
All of which suggests that Sessions possibly won’t be leaving after all. The view within the Justice Department is that Spicer’s unwillingness to state the president’s confidence was inartful but not an omen.
On the other hand, the White House has not responded to a request to clarify whether Trump does, in fact, have confidence in his attorney general.
Coats, the Comey Warm-Up Act
As the Trump administration prepares for Thursday’s highly anticipated testimony of James Comey to the Senate Intelligence committee, the planned congressional testimony of a current administration official on Wednesday suddenly has new relevance.
Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, reportedly told associates that President Trump asked him in March to intervene in the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s ties to Russia. (Comey had confirmed the existence of that investigation in a congressional hearing days before.)
According to the Washington Post:
Coats is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence committee Wednesday.
Counterprogramming Comey
The effort to push back against Comey’s Thursday testimony began preemptively with a new attack ad from the Trump-aligned Great America Alliance. The 30-second ad, which looks like a campaign spot, blasts the former FBI director as a “showboat.”
The ad will air during Comey’s testimony Thursday, on CNN and Fox News, as well as appearing digitally online on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
But beyond this counterprogramming, what else will Trump do to combat what could be damaging testimony from Comey? The Washington Post‘s Bob Costa reports that Trump “may live tweet” during the hearing. The Post describes him as “spoiling for a fight,” which will make the already dramatic hearings even more so.
