President Trump once again expressed his regret for making Jeff Sessions his attorney general and blamed him for creating the special counsel’s “Russian Witch Hunt” after he recused himself from the investigation.
“The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself…I would have quickly picked someone else,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined…and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!”
Trump has long conveyed his frustration at Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Robert Mueller probe, referring to the attorney general as “weak” and “beleaguered.”
Last week, Trump tweeted comments from former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova, who said the recusal “was an unforced betrayal” of the president.
That tweet came a day after a New York Times report said Trump berated Sessions and tried to get him to reverse his decision during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in March 2017.
Mueller is looking into the meeting, the report said, as part of his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe after he entered the White House.
Sessions opted out of the investigation after it was revealed he lied at his Senate confirmation hearing about twice meeting with a Russian ambassador during the campaign.
Because he recused himself, the job of overseeing Mueller’s investigation fell to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.