You could almost hear the audible gasp by establishment Washington, D.C. when they learned that former Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz was going to be appointed attorney general by President Donald Trump. Truthfully my first reaction was not positive either.
But sometimes first reactions are wrong.
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One of the most fateful decisions of Donald Trump’s presidency happened just weeks after Inauguration Day.
In March 2017, Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to demand Jeff Sessions, a former Senate colleague and Trump’s new attorney general, recuse himself from anything related to the investigation into alleged Russian election collusion. Sessions’ two brief meetings in 2016 with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak—a figure who appeared often in collusion-related drama—amounted to evidence of collusion, collusion perps insisted.
Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were just a few top Republicans who asked Sessions to step aside—so he did.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss a Jeff Sessions Senate race loss in Alabama and Bari Weiss’s resignation from The New York Times.
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Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions lost the Republican nomination for his old Senate seat in Alabama to former college football coach Tommy Tuberville, likely ending a long political career with a bitter defeat egged on by President Donald Trump.
Tuberville, 65, beat Sessions in Tuesday’s Republican runoff as Sessions fell short in his attempted comeback for a seat he held for two decades before resigning to become Trump’s attorney general in 2017.
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Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions kicked off his campaign to reclaim his Alabama Senate seat Thursday with a full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump.
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Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly considering a run for his old Alabama Senate seat, according to three Republicans familiar with the matter.
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U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, will assume a senior position on the House Judiciary Committee after Democrats officially retake that branch of Congress early next year. Cohen, in a newsletter to constituents late last week, said he can’t wait. That’s because Cohen gets to go after U.S. Republican President Donald Trump. Don’t expect Cohen to show fairness and objectivity — given his past vitriolic remarks about Trump and Republicans in general. “It will once again be what the Founders intended it to be, ‘the People’s House,’ and no longer ‘the House of Trump,’” Cohen said in the email newsletter to constituents. One of Cohen’s top priorities, he said, is “oversight of suspicious patterns of corruption we’ve seen but were powerless to investigate in Congress,” referring, presumably, to Trump. “I look forward to playing an active role in that oversight as a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee,” Cohen wrote. In the same newsletter, Cohen castigated Trump for firing former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and making Matthew Whitaker the acting replacement. “The only reason he (Whitaker) was selected is that he will be a hatchet man, employing an open, notorious and blatant effort to stifle and control the (Robert) Mueller investigation and…
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by Chuck Ross Top Democrats in the House and Senate continued Sunday to press for acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s recusal from the Mueller investigation over his remarks criticizing the probe. In a letter sent to the Department of Justice’s top ethics official, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and five leading committee Democrats asked whether Whitaker was advised to recuse himself from the investigation. “There are serious ethical considerations that require Mr. Whitaker’s immediate recusal from any involvement with the Special Counsel investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” reads the letter, which was sent to Assistant Attorney General Lee J. Lofthus. “Regrettably, Mr. Whitaker’s statements indicate a clear bias against the investigation that would cause a reasonable person to question his impartiality.” The Democrats pointed to remarks that Whitaker made in 2017 when he ran the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a conservative non-profit group. Whitaker was hired as Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff, reportedly after President Donald Trump saw him on CNN criticizing the Mueller investigation. “The official supervising the Special Counsel investigation must be — in both fact and appearance — independent and impartial,” reads the letter, which…
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Leftist groups organized protests in hundreds of cities across the nation, including Tennessee, Thursday to protest the appointment of Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, citing fears he might interfere with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. Many protests used similar words and slogans. Demonstrators marched on Nashville, Chattanooga and Murfreesboro, among other cities. They packed the streets of Nashville Thursday night in support of Mueller, NewsChannel 5 reported. Whitaker has assumed the role of overseeing Mueller. In Murfreesboro, the Women’s March descended on downtown with signs bearing such slogans as “TIME TO IMPEACH.” The Women’s March on Nashville Facebook page called the protest “Nobody Trumps the Law” and “Rod Rosenstein Removal Protest.” Crowds also turned out in Chicago; Greensboro, North Carolina; Chattanooga, WRCB said, citing the Associated Press. Breitbart reported that Public Citizen tweeted “In firing Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump has crossed a red line and started a constitutional crisis. We are activating our rapid-response network, launching mass protests nationwide TOMORROW (11/8) at 5pm local time.” (Sessions actually resigned by President Trump’s request.) In firing Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump has crossed a red line and started a constitutional crisis. We are activating our rapid-response network, launching mass protests nationwide TOMORROW…
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by Maswood Farivar President Donald Trump forced his controversial Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign on Wednesday, setting the stage for a potential showdown with newly energized Congressional Democrats over the investigation of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Sessions, in a letter to Trump, wrote that he was resigning at “your request,” accepting a fait accompli he’d long sought to avert despite being repeatedly chastised and publicly belittled by Trump over his recusal from oversight of the Russia probe. In a pair of tweets announcing Sessions’ resignation Wednesday afternoon, Trump thanked the attorney general for his service and said Matt Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff and vocal critic of the Russia investigation, would take over as acting attorney general. A permanent replacement would be announced later, Trump said, without indicating whether he’d tap Whitaker for the top job at Justice send his name to the Senate. The forced departure of Sessions, a 71-year-old former Republican Senator and early supporter of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, capped a turbulent tenure that hit a rough patch just weeks after Sessions took office in February 2017 and recused himself because of conflicts of interest. Trump blamed the recusal for the appointment…
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GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona asked U.S. Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions if they would consider arresting illegal immigrants who are attending President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address Tuesday evening. “Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking…
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Vowing to stomp out a “culture of leaking,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested Friday that he might go after journalists. In announcing a crackdown on leaks, Sessions said he was taking the advice of career prosecutors in reviewing the Justice Department’s policy on media subpoenas. He said he respects the role of a free press. “But…
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited a reported sexual assault by an illegal immigrant in Portland, Oregon, to explain why the Justice Department will continue cracking down on sanctuary cities that receive federal funds. “Cities and states with so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe,” @JeffSessions says. If a municipality wants access to its Public…
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Wednesday during a speech at the Columbus Police Academy a new Department of Justice (DOJ) pilot program, Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, and named eastern Tennessee as one of the 12 districts selected to participate in the program. According to the DOJ website, the program will “utilize data to help combat the devastating opioid crisis that is ravaging families and communities across America.” As part of the program, the DOJ will fund twelve Assistant U.S. Attorneys whose focus will be to investigate and prosecute health care fraud related to prescription opioids. The opioid epidemic has received much attention in the state, following a Tennessee Department of Health report that 1,451 people lost their lives to drug overdose in 2015 alone. Since then, House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) created an opioid task force to address the state’s epidemic. While well received, the formation of the task force was not without controversy, because none of the Representatives named to it are from Northeast Tennessee – the area hardest hit by the crisis with more than double the number of admissions for opioid treatment as compared to any other region in the state. More recently, the Tennessee…
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Republican senators are warning that any effort to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be met with stiff resistance – with Sen. Lindsey Graham saying Thursday that “there will be holy hell to pay” if the attorney general is pushed out. President Trump has lashed out at Mr. Sessions repeatedly in recent days, saying he’s disappointed…
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions insisted Thursday that he has no plans to resign, despite harsh criticism that President Donald Trump leveled at him during an extended interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. Trump complained in the interview that Sessions was “very unfair” to him when he from involvement in the Justice Department’s probe into…
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The administration on Friday said it will appeal directly to the Supreme Court after a lower federal judge, for the second time, ruled against President Trump’s updated travel ban policy. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii ruled late Thursday that cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, as well as grandparents and grandchildren, all count as…
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the federal government is stepping in to help lower the dangerous murder rate in Chicago. “This is good. We’ve been supporting that. We’re sending in additional gun investigators. We’ve directed our U.S. attorneys to prosecute these gun cases aggressively. The police have been demoralized in many ways. They’re not…
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Kenneth Starr said Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was within his right to refuse to answer questions over possible claims of executive privilege. “The attorney general was exactly right. He was protecting executive privilege, he wasn’t asserting it,” Mr. Starr said on CNN. Mr. Starr acted as an independent counsel during the investigation into former…
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday released a memo explaining how the federal government will target “sanctuary” jurisdictions, narrowly defining what constitutes non-cooperation. The language appears designed to align with a last month. U.S. District Judge William Orrick ruled that an signed by President Donald Trump in January was overly broad and could not take effect,…
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Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions was officially sworn in as the next attorney general of the United States during a ceremony inside the Oval Office Thursday morning. President Donald Trump used the moment to reiterate that Sessions was a man of “integrity and principle,” and someone who has “devoted his life to the cause of justice.” Sessions…
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