(May 12) In one particular part of a remarkable open letter to citizens of Alabama, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions finally makes a crucial point about why he recused himself from the controversial investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Sessions’s critics, including President Trump, have been intellectually dishonest (or worse) in failing to acknowledge the importance of this point, which I have made here before at length. Sessions himself hadn’t exactly done so, apparently because he was loath to contradict Trump directly. The point is this: Sessions recused himself not just because he was vaguely “part of the campaign” that was being investigated but because he himself was a specific subject of that investigation.
“I did what the law required me to do,” Sessions wrote. “I was a central figure in the campaign and was also a subject of and witness in the investigation and could obviously not legally be involved in investigating myself.”
Repeat: He was a subject. Page 12 of the Mueller report said this very clearly. Sessions therefore was obliged, logically and ethically, to recuse himself.
Furthermore, for those who refuse to understand the politics of this, Sessions’s recusal did not harm Trump but instead avoided worse harm: “If I had ignored and broken the law, the Democrats would have used that to severely damage the president.”
To that, the ignorant critics say Sessions should not have taken the job if he knew he would need to recuse himself. How absurd.
To that, the ignorant critics say Sessions should not have taken the job if he knew he would need to recuse himself. How absurd. Again, I explained this more than a year ago, but now, Sessions finally says it for himself: “I knew no such thing. I wasn’t informed of Comey’s secret investigation until after I became Attorney General.” Furthermore, it was even later that Sessions not only knew of the investigation but knew he had become a subject thereof. Even after that, he needed to take the time to run the question through the Justice Department’s ethics office, which informed him that recusal was necessary….
[For the rest of this column — and it’s important, because the criticism against Sessions on this count is both ignorant and dishonest, and in some cases malicious — anyway, please read the rest of this column at this link.]
