Why did Jeff Sessions, who announced on Thursday afternoon that he will recuse himself from the Russia election investigation, wait until now to do it? The answer is that in his first 21 days in the Justice Department, he simply didn’t need to.

The FBI-Justice Department investigation was already going when Sessions was sworn in on February 9. It was going before Sessions got there, and it kept going when he arrived. Word is that Sessions was not faced with any “decision point” in which he was required to make some sort of judgment on whether to continue, or expand, or close down, or in some other way decide the future of any aspect of the investigation. Had such a point arrived, Sessions would likely have made a decision on recusal long before today.