A Democratic lawmaker who has already announced his bid for the White House in 2020 slammed President Trump for asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign Wednesday.
“We should all be worried about what happens next. The irony is that Attorney General Sessions was a faithful executor of the President’s hardline agenda, but clearly, the President has his eye on other matters,” Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., said in a statement.
Delaney called it “insulting” that Trump would move to oust the top official at the Department of Justice hours after Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s election.
“It is even more insulting to take actions that undermine the rule of law,” he said.
[Opinion: Jeff Sessions never deserved to be treated this way]
Sessions submitted his resignation letter Wednesday afternoon at the request of the president. With Sessions’ departure, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is likely to oversee special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Sessions had recused himself in 2017 from the investigation, prompting frequent attacks directed at him from the president and putting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in charge of the investigation’s oversight.
Whitaker has been critical of the Mueller investigation, writing an op-ed for CNN in 2017 titled, “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going too far.”
