Jeff Sessions is in a surreal place. He spent 20 years as a senator from Alabama followed by 21 months as U.S. attorney general, and now, he is in a tightly competitive race to win back his old Senate seat. He was the first important national figure in government to endorse candidate Donald Trump back in early 2016. That endorsement was an important boost for Trump, whom some important Republicans dismissed at the time. The newly elected Trump picked Sessions for attorney general.

At the Justice Department, Sessions worked hard to implement the president’s agenda on issues such as immigration and crime. But as far as relations with Trump were concerned, it all went to hell in early March 2017, when Sessions, who had been on the job all of 21 days, recused himself from supervising the Trump-Russia investigation.