Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back late Friday to criticism from President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly jabbed at Sessions and is now backing Tommy Tuberville against him in the Alabama Senate primary. “3 years ago, after Jeff Sessions recused himself, the Fraudulent Mueller Scam began,” Trump tweeted. “Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions. He let our country down.” Sessions defended his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, even though he was legally bound to, and fired back at the president that “you’re damn fortunate I did.”
Sessions standing up for himself is “notable,” tweeted the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, given that the former attorney general “has generally avoided getting into it when Trump pokes him.” CNN notes this to be just the latest instance of Sessions defending his 2017 recusal from any investigation—including the Justice Department’s Russia probe—into the president’s 2016 campaign.
Earlier this month, as CNN reported, in a press release titled “Jeff Sessions Sets the Record Straight on Recusal: An Open Letter to the People of Alabama,” the former attorney general wrote that despite Trump publicly disagreeing with his decision, he did so to help the president. “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,” Sessions stated. “If I had ignored and broken the law, the Democrats would have used that to severely damage the President.” And while Sessions—who was the first senator to endorse Trump in the 2016 race—has maintained his support for the president, the feeling hasn’t appeared mutual. In a May appearance on Fox and Friends, Trump criticized Sessions, who he called “very weak and very sad,” for his decision.
“Instead of being a man and saying ‘this is a hoax,’ he recused himself,” Trump said, claiming that he didn’t think Sessions was “equipped to be attorney general” but “he was the first senator to endorse me so I felt a little bit of obligation,” adding that Sessions “came to see me four times, just begging me to be attorney general.”
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