We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
TRUMP BLASTS SESSIONS AGAIN, FUELING SPECULATION THE AG WILL BE FIRED
Reports that Trump promised Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III last Thursday that the President would oppose the compromise criminal justice bill are puzzling, because of the simmering rift between Trump and Sessions that exploded again into public view late last week.
Trump complained in a Fox & Friends interview that Sessions “never took control of the Justice Department” and that he was disloyal. Sessions, whom Trump called a moron last year, finally had enough, issuing a statement saying he and the DOJ “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”
Trump has been furious at Sessions ever since he recused himself from the Trump Russia investigation. Trump said he considered Sessions’ decision to be a sign of disloyalty, and the two have an unusually cold relationship for a president and the nation’s top law-enforcement official.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said last week that Trump has made clear he supports the prison reform legislation “that will ultimately make American communities safer and save taxpayers money. The president recognizes there are some injustices in the system that should be fixed.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) said it ultimately won’t matter whether they have Sessions’ support or not. “Listen,” Scott said, “[Sessions] doesn’t have a vote on this one.”
The notion that Trump mollified Sessions by agreeing to oppose the compromise package, only several weeks after Trump said he would sign anything Congress sent him on criminal justice reform, is suspect. The fact that he told White House advisor Jared Kushner and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) the next day that he was willing to take up reform after the November elections and that White House officials continue to state his support for criminal justice reform, makes the alleged Sessions promise even harder to believe.
A Bloomberg article last Thursday provides the starkest evidence that Trump has little to gain by agreeing to kill criminal justice reform to please his AG. Bloomberg reported that Trump “may have received a crucial go-ahead signal from two Republican senators” to fire Sessions “with a key condition attached: wait until after the November elections.”
Confronted with the Manafort conviction and the Cohen guilty plea last week, Bloomberg said, Trump has reaffirmed his open resentment that Sessions recused himself from what’s become a wide-ranging investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The pivotal message to Trump came from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). “The president’s entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that’s qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,” Graham said. However, he added, forcing out Sessions before November “would create havoc” with efforts to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, as well as with the midterm elections on Nov. 6 that will determine whether Republicans keep control of Congress.
Grassley, the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, also changed his position on Thursday, saying in an interview that he’d be able to make time for hearings for a new attorney general after saying in the past that the committee was too busy.
Some senior Republican senators still strongly rejected Graham’s seemingly impromptu fire-him-later idea.
Despite the political hell-storm that Trump’s dismissal of Sessions would create, it is clear that criminal justice reform would only benefit from Sessions being run out of town.
McClatchy News, Trump, Sessions feud spills over into dispute over policy on criminal justice reform (Aug. 21, 2018)
Politico, Senators Signal Sessions’ Ouster (Aug. 24, 2018)
Bloomberg, Key Republicans Give Trump a Path to Fire Sessions After the Election (Aug. 23, 2018)
– Thomas L. Root