This week, President Donald Trump took to Twitter with complaints about his administration’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who left the White House ages ago at this point. (He was fired shortly after the midterm elections in 2018.) Trump, in a Twitter post endorsing Sessions’s opponent in the ongoing Republican Senate primary race in Alabama, complained that Sessions had stepped back from control of the Russia investigation in light of his own part of the Trump campaign dealings that were under scrutiny. Sessions promptly responded to the president’s criticism in his own Twitter post, in which he derided Trump’s idea that his “personal feelings” should dictate the outcome of Sessions’s campaign.
Damn, after a years-long search Jeff Sessions has finally located his spine and clapped back at Trump.
Oh, and if you're in Alabama, just do the right thing and vote for Doug Jones. It's the easiest way to keep from being embarrassed. https://t.co/GswfUUK1tB
— TrumpsTaxes (@TrumpsTaxes) May 23, 2020
Sessions tweeted, in direct response to the president:
‘@realdonaldtrump Look, I know your anger, but recusal was required by law. I did my duty & you’re damn fortunate I did. It protected the rule of law & resulted in your exoneration. Your personal feelings don’t dictate who Alabama picks as their senator, the people of Alabama do.’
.@realdonaldtrump Look, I know your anger, but recusal was required by law. I did my duty & you're damn fortunate I did. It protected the rule of law & resulted in your exoneration. Your personal feelings don't dictate who Alabama picks as their senator, the people of Alabama do. https://t.co/QQKHNAgmiE
— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) May 23, 2020
In a follow-up tweet, Sessions added a diatribe against his opponent, Tommy Tuberville, who Trump endorsed and Sessions called a “coward.”
Tuberville's a coward who is rightly too afraid to debate me. He says you're wrong on China & trade. He wants to bring in even more foreign workers to take American jobs. That's not your agenda and it's not mine or Alabama's. I know Alabama. Tuberville doesn't.
— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) May 23, 2020
To be clear — Trump was actually not exonerated at the conclusion of the Russia investigation. The final report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation specifically states that the president was not exonerated. Still, Sessions’s point is actually true that it would have been a brazen violation of protocol for him to keep control of the Russia investigation, not to mention wind it down like the president wanted.
It’s worth noting — while he was actually in his previous position of power, Sessions pretty much never broke with the president. He supported Trump’s harshly anti-immigrant agenda and more, but now, long after he left D.C., he has come around to issuing this harsh public rebuke of the president for acting as though it was Sessions’s responsibility to ensure that the president escaped scrutiny. Trump wanted Sessions to basically forcefully wind the Russia investigation down, but that’s definitely not how the impartial implementation of the rule of law is supposed to unfold in the U.S.
Doug Jones
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 23, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response below:
Photo via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, available under a Creative Commons license
