MOBILE, Alabama — While there are good reasons for Republican former Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to run for his former Senate seat in Alabama, it bears saying that if he does run, he deserves to win.
Moreover, the people of Alabama would be well served to have him back in office.
If Sessions runs, President Trump surely won’t like it. He will likely verbally eviscerate his former cabinet pick throughout the primary. Nonetheless, if Sessions wins the Republican nomination anyway, he still would be favored against fluke incumbent Democrat Doug Jones in this heavily conservative state. Besides, during a general election campaign, Trump would be too busy with his own reelection battle to waste time attacking Sessions.
Either way, Trump is wrong about Sessions. Indeed, he’s twice wrong.
First, Trump is wrong to say that “if [Sessions] was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.” Balderdash. There was no way for Sessions to tell him before Trump chose him, because there was no way Sessions could have known recusal would be necessary.
Yes, people generally were aware that the FBI already was investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Still, Sessions wasn’t even an investigatory target until after Trump already had chosen him. During his confirmation hearings, Sessions was asked about his own contacts with Russians as a campaign surrogate and denied such contacts. Only four weeks later, after Sessions took office, was it revealed that he did interact with the Russian ambassador, briefly, on two occasions, both arguably in the ordinary course of Senate duties and not on behalf of the Trump campaign.
The revelation of those contacts raised the possibility that Sessions had perjured himself. It was a “second degree” charge, not related to collusion itself. Only then, after he had been in office for weeks, did he become a possible investigation target. Before then, there was nothing from which to recuse.
Note, by the way, that special counsel Robert Mueller eventually determined that Sessions’ answers to the Senate were not dishonest. They involved entirely “plausible” differences of interpretation of the way the questions were phrased. Sessions was innocent. Yet he wasn’t pronounced innocent for two more years. Until then, he was technically a subject of the inquiry.
The second way Trump errs is in saying Sessions should not have recused himself. This is beyond ludicrous. Sessions was informed by Department of Justice ethics officials that he should recuse himself. He basically had no choice. As the ethics chief said, Sessions absolutely did the right thing — indeed, the only acceptable thing. Any attorney general who ignored such direction from ethics officials would soon be forced from office anyway. Either way, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would have ended up in control of the Russia investigation.
Thus, Rosenstein would have been in place to appoint a special counsel once Trump’s own mistakes necessitated it. Mueller’s appointment was catalyzed directly by Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey and Trump’s own subsequent statements that the firing would ease pressure from the Russia investigation. Trump is blaming Sessions for things Sessions could never have known about and could not reasonably avoid.
Sessions, a man of dignity, hasn’t publicly done much to lay out this case. In a primary campaign, he would do so. The truth in his favor would finally be publicized.
While Sessions doesn’t merit the blame Trump gives him, he does deserve credit for years of superb, sincere Senate service. If elected again, he would regain most of his seniority, a big boon for Alabama’s interests, and could resume constructive influence on issues of law and order, immigration, and fiscal discipline. His image would rightly be rehabilitated, and his state and nation would benefit from his thoughtful leadership.
