Trump fires attorney general Jeff Sessions

On Wednesday, just one day after the midterm elections, Trump asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign, ending the longtime Alabama senator’s nearly two years running the Department of Justice, US news website Vox reports.

Trump tweeted that Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff, will take over as the acting head of the Justice Department, adding that a permanent replacement will be announced soon.

“We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well!” Trump continued.

Sessions also wrote a resignation letter, which he says Trump requested, in which he outlined much of what he did in office, such as combat gangs.

“I have served honourably as your Attorney General and have worked to implement the law enforcement agenda based on the rule of law that formed a central part of your campaign,” he wrote.

The move had been telegraphed on Capitol Hill, with top Republican senators and former Sessions allies like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa saying they expected Sessions’s ouster after the midterm elections.

The resignation took few by surprise.

Trump has been expressing his anger at Sessions for months, prompting repeated questions about how long the attorney general would keep his job. (Sessions is known to have offered to resign at least once; Trump refused to accept it.)

“This was not unexpected,” Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told Vox. “Sessions tolerated more abuse from Trump than any Cabinet member should have to endure. Yet, he soldiered on out of a sense of duty.”

Trump added fuel to the fire during an August 23 interview with Fox News.

“I put in an attorney general who never took control of the Justice Department,” the president said.

“Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldn’t have put him in.”

Sessions responded mere hours later.

“I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the President’s agenda — one that protects the safety and security and rights of the American people reduces, violent crime, enforces our immigration laws, promotes economic growth, and advances religious liberty,” Sessions said in a written statement.

“While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” he added.

Sessions’s defence hasn’t stopped Trump from publicly blasting him. In September, for example, Trump targeted Sessions after the Justice Department indicted two Republican members of Congress.

“Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicised charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department,” Trump tweeted on September 3. “Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......”

And the president continually criticized Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement official, for recusing himself from the probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, a move that set the stage for the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump has also complained that Sessions wasn’t sufficiently loyal because, since then, he has failed to prevent Mueller from indicting a growing number of Trump confidantes and targeting others.

The irony of Sessions’s departure is that Trump has removed one of his most loyal foot soldiers, which could imperil other parts of the president’s agenda.

Sessions was one of the first senators to endorse Trump, and used his time as the nation’s top law enforcement officer to implement the anti-immigration “tough on crime” policies that were at the core of Trump’s campaign.

Sessions pulled back federal oversight of local police departments.

He’s moved to prosecute anyone who illegally crosses the US-Mexico border regardless of the conditions they’re escaping back home, while pushing immigration judges to take on more deportation cases.

He rescinded previous limitations on harsh mandatory minimum prison sentences for low-level drug offences, and asked prosecutors to consider the death penalty in some drug trafficking cases.

Whether Trump realises it or not, he has let his fury over the Russia investigation threaten his policy agenda — throwing his already chaotic presidency into even more chaos.