Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions joked about being pushed out of the Trump administration, saying his fate could have been a lot worse.
“Do the right thing every day and usually things will work out, but not always,” Sessions said Wednesday in an interview with an ABC News affiliate in Alabama. “Usually they work out. I told someone at least in the United States, they fire you, they don’t shoot you.”
Sessions was dismissed by President Trump the day after the 2018 midterm elections. Before that, the president had routinely criticized Sessions over his decision to recuse himself from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia investigation.
But Sessions told ABC 33/40 his experience as the country’s top law enforcement official hadn’t marred his appreciation for the legal system.
“I don’t have words to express how grateful we should be about it and how we should work to protect it,” he said at an event honoring Alabama state Attorney General Steve Marshall in Montgomery on Wednesday. “If we maintain the word of law where power and politics and special influence don’t control what objectivity and fairness is the rule, this country will remain strong. If we let that get away from us, it will be a monumental reduction in our greatness of America.”
Sessions, who served Alabama in the Senate for two decades before joining the Trump administration in 2017, has kept a low profile since his exit from the Justice Department. Some political pundits speculate he may challenge Democrat Sen. Doug Jones, who replaced him in the upper chamber after a heated special election against Republican Roy Moore, in 2020.
William Barr, Trump’s pick to be Sessions’ permanent successor at DOJ, is currently being considered by the Senate as part of his confirmation process. Barr previously served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1993.
