A report from the New York Times reveals new details about what preceded Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ offer in May to resign — an offer first reported by Politico in June. Sessions penned the ultimately-rejected resignation letter after President Trump tore into him in the middle of a meeting in the Oval Office, the Times reporting Thursday.
Trump hurled a litany of insults at Sessions, including calling him an “idiot,” for his decision to recuse himself from the FBI’s Russia investigation, according to the Times. Trump also said that appointing Sessions as attorney general was one of the biggest mistake he’s ever made.
Trump’s outburst came after White House counsel Don McGahn, one of the aides present at the May meeting, took a phone call from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department official then in charge of the Russia probe after Trump had fired former Director James Comey. Rosenstein told McGahn that he was appointing a special counsel to take over the probe, according to the Times. When the news was passed along to Trump, he turned his ire on Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia probe after statements he made to Congress about Russian contacts during the campaign proved false.
Per the Times:
Ashen and emotional, Mr. Sessions told the president he would quit and sent a resignation letter to the White House, according to four people who were told details of the meeting. Mr. Sessions would later tell associates that the demeaning way the president addressed him was the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.
Trump was talked out of firing Sessions by members of his inner circle, including Vice President Mike Pence, then-chief of staff Reince Priebus and then-chief strategist Steve Bannon, according to the Times. The tension continued, however, and Trump went on to make his discontent with Sessions public, in tweets last summer that called Sessions “beleaguered” and accused him of taking “a VERY weak position” in the investigations into Hillary Clinton .
Sessions has weathered these and other insults, the Times reported, due to the once-in-lifetime opportunity he has as America’s top law enforcement agent, and particularly the influence he has on a more hardline approach to immigration policy.
It appears that even in this aspect of job, Sessions has been again undercut by Trump. Less than two weeks after Sessions gleefully got to announce that the Trump administration was ending an Obama-era program shielding certain young immigrants from deportation, Trump signaled he would be working with Democrats to codify that program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, into law.
