The New York Times led the effort when it published a piece on Tuesday implying special counsel Robert Mueller had questioned Attorney General Jeff Sessions about conversations Sessions had with President Trump following his recusal from the Russia investigation. In reporting on this latest leak, however, the New York Times went to great lengths to revisit Sessions’ decision to recuse. Coupling these points served a two-fold purpose: The Times could both remind Trump of Sessions’ recusal “betrayal,” while also raising the specter that Mueller’s team is seeking to use Sessions to frame Trump for obstruction of justice.
Here’s how the Times put it: Mueller’s interest in the attorney general “demonstrates Mr. Sessions’s overlooked role as a key witness in the investigation into whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the inquiry itself.” “It also suggests that the obstruction investigation is broader than it is widely understood to be,” reporters Michael Schmidt and Julie Hirschfeld Davis continued, beyond “the president’s interactions with and firing of the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, but also his relationship with Mr. Sessions.”
CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, Salon, and others liberal outlets quickly fell in line, running similar stories shortly after the New York Times’ piece ran. And Wednesday morning saw the CBS “This Morning” crew interviewing Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., about the allegations and asking whether Trump obstructed justice when he asked Sessions to reconsider his decision to recuse. “I don’t think so,” Gowdy responded, adding that “I think what the president is doing is expressing frustration that Attorney General Sessions should have shared these reasons for recusal before he took the job, not afterward.”
The ploy worked, with Trump taking to twitter and tatting out a tweet-storm about Sessions. In the thread, Trump quoted Gowdy’s response, which continued, “If I were the president and I picked someone to be the country’s chief law enforcement officer, and they told me later, ‘oh by the way I’m not going to be able to participate in the most important case in the office, I would be frustrated too. And that’s how I read that – Senator Sessions, why didn’t you tell me before I picked you? There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!” Trump then added his own concluding punctuation to the quote, tweeting: “And I wish I did!”
Trump’s tweets elevated the story, with the major outlets now reporting not just Mueller’s purported interest in Sessions—without which, I might note, any mention of the president’s executive privilege which would limit Sessions’ ability to discuss private conversations he had with the president—but also Trump’s assertion that he wished he had selected a different attorney general.
In a span of 24 hours, the liberal media succeeded in reviving the dying Russia collusion narrative by using Trump’s grudge over Sessions’ decision to recuse from the investigation to lure the president’s attention away from “spygate.” And the tactic worked brilliantly—for the Left: Trump’s tweets diverted attention from the growing evidence of FBI, CIA, and DOJ misconduct, including their use of an informant to spy on his campaign, and redirected the media’s focus to Trump’s own conduct.
It is beyond unfortunate that Trump fell for the ruse and lost his focus on “spygate.” After nearly two years of arguing the Russia investigation was a “witch hunt,” Trump finally had enough evidence to support his claims and break through the media’s Russia collusion narrative. But fortunately for Trump, the evidence of misconduct continues to mount, likely making Trump’s impulsive tweet but a minor detour to the bigger story.
Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge, and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct professor for the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.
