Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation was “not a surprise” to White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, according to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump “expressed anger” about Sessions’ decision in March of 2017, the day after the former Alabama lawmaker announced that he would not oversee any federal investigations into the 2016 campaign due to his role as an adviser during the election. His recusal left Trump feeling vulnerable, but Bannon defended the decision.
“Bannon recalled telling the President that Sessions’s recusal was not a surprise and that before the inauguration they had discussed that Sessions would have to recuse from campaign-related investigations because of his work on the Trump Campaign,” the report said.
Trump fumed at Sessions publicly for months. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” he told the New York Times in July of 2017.
Sessions announced the recusal while fending off accusations that he had lied to lawmakers about his contacts with the Russian government, but he maintained at the time that he was in the process of evaluating his ethical obligations before that controversy emerged.
“Sessions believed the decision to recuse was not a close call, given the applicable language in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which Sessions considered to be clear and decisive,” Mueller’s report said. “Sessions got the impression, based on calls he received from White House officials, that the President was very upset with him and did not think he had done his duty as Attorney General.”
The report indicates Bannon and then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus were protective of Sessions after the embattled attorney general complied with Trump’s request to submit a letter of resignation in May of 2017.
“Priebus told Sessions it was not good for the President to have the letter because it would function as a kind of ‘shock collar’ that the President could use any time he wanted,” the Mueller report notes. “Priebus said the President had ‘DOJ by the throat.’ Priebus and Bannon told Sessions they would attempt to get the letter back from the President with a notation that he was not accepting Sessions’s resignation.”
All three officials would eventually be pushed out amid various controversies. Priebus was ousted in July of 2017 , during Anthony Scaramucci’s brief tenure as the White House communications director tasked with identifying advisers responsible for embarrassing media leaks. Bannon was forced out a month later.
Sessions remained in place until after the 2018 midterm elections, the subject of regular criticism from the president throughout his tenure, and was eventually replaced by current Attorney General William Barr.
“As the Special Counsel’s report makes clear, the Russian government sought to interfere in our election,” Barr said Thursday morning. “But thanks to the Special Counsel’s thorough investigation, we now know that the Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of President Trump or the Trump campaign – or the knowing assistance of any other Americans for that matter. That is something that all Americans can and should be grateful to have confirmed.”
