November 7, 2018

Jeff Sessions’ Long National Nightmare Is Finally Over

Chip Somodevilla/CNP via ZUMA

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I just woke up from one of my dex-induced 3-hour naps to learn that this has been a bad week for people named Sessions. The first to go was Rep. Pete Sessions, son of former FBI director William Sessions, and today it was the turn of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former senator from the great state of Alabama. Both are Eagle Scouts.

So Jeff Sessions has finally been fired. For the nonce, he has been replaced by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker. It doesn’t appear that Whitaker was ever an Eagle Scout, but he did play in the Rose Bowl for Iowa. In any case, this will all change whenever Trump gets around to nominating a permanent replacement—unless Trump decides to stick with Whitaker. Whoever it is, I think one thing we can be sure of is that it won’t be someone who will recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

By the way, the Washington Post reported on this three weeks ago:

President Trump talked recently with Jeff Sessions’s own chief of staff about replacing Sessions as attorney general, according to people briefed on the conversation, signaling that the president remains keenly interested in ousting his top law enforcement official….On a long list of indignities that Sessions has endured from his boss, Trump’s discussing replacing him with his own top aide stands out.

I imagine this was fake news at the time, but whaddayaknow? It turned out to be real news after all. Trump just didn’t want to announce it before the election, when it might have pissed off some of his supporters, who were big Jeff Sessions fans.

I wonder who else Trump is itching to fire? Rod Rosenstein maybe? Does anybody have a pool going?

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This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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