Attorney General Jeff Sessions Kinda Sucks. Fire His Ass.
Many people have been talking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week. The long story short of it is this: Wednesday, reports surfaced that Sessions met with a Russian official during the 2016 campaign while he was an advisor/aide to the Trump campaign. During his confirmation hearings for AG, Sessions volunteered that he had had no contact with any Russian officials. This is not true.
USA Today writes:
What’s clear is that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in July and September — then told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath in January that “I did not have communications with the Russians.”
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said this is what Michael Flynn did — who was forced to resign — so Sessions too must resign.
Sessions was already carrying plenty of baggage pre-Russia controversy. He’s a baggage guy. It’s not great optics when our country’s top attorney is a huge baggage guy.
What baggage? BBC writes:
The latest controversy follows that of alleged racist remarks by Mr Sessions in the past, which proved a roadblock in his political career and put him under fresh scrutiny for the attorney general post.
A Senate committee denied Mr Sessions a federal judgeship in 1989 after lawmakers heard testimony that he had used a racial slur.
He had also joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were OK until he heard they smoked marijuana.
Sessions originally did the denial thing, calling the claims false. Said something to the effect of “fuck off” to the Dems. The FBI is running a probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election; people demanded Sessions recuse himself from this probe.
Yesterday he did just that. What does Donnie think?
Sessions claims his meetings with the Russian Ambassador did not include election-related talk. In fairness, it’s important to note that senators frequently meet with foreign ambassadors to discuss all sorts of things; here is a long list of those Sessions meetings in 2016, via PBS.
It’s also important to note that the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, is considered by U.S. intelligence communities to be one of the top Russian spies they’ve got and THE top spy recruiter for Russia. Not good.
My thoughts are this — is it possible that Sessions met with Kislyak in a completely legal, ethical, unproblematic way while he was a U.S. Senator and advisor to Trump’s campaign? Yes, sure it is. But right now, in the current political climate and its toxic relationship to Russia, the optics are not worth it. Trump gave a joint session speech Tuesday night that was his most successful attempt thus far to right the ship and keep his administration’s agenda pointed in the right direction.
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Russian/Trump cabinet controversy is a dog shit followup to that. It’s the worst kind of optics. Sessions clearly lied in the hearings — he simply DID meet with a Russian official but said he did not — and already had plenty of baggage.
Can him and move on. It’s going to happen eventually anyway — I say display decisiveness, say you’re administration cannot afford such distractions at this time, and do it. Aside from the optics, there simply HAVE to be better choices than this controversy-laced 20-year senator who blatantly lied about communication with Russia. Can his ass.