November 7, 2018

Jeff Sessions Out as Attorney General

Matthew Whitaker becomes acting attorney general and will assume oversight of the Russia investigation.

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After months of enduring extraordinary attacks in both public and private from President Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions has, at the president’s request, stepped down as attorney general. The move to force out Sessions after the midterm elections had been widely expected, but the timing of the announcement—just one day after the elections—came as a surprise.

Sessions’ chief of staff Matthew Whitaker will take over as acting attorney general.

The president has long taken issue with Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he had not been forthcoming about his own communications with Russian officials. Trump frequently aired his frustrations with Sessions on Twitter and in public appearances. In a stunning admission last July, Trump told the New York Times that he never would have appointed Sessions as attorney general if he had known he would eventually recuse himself from the ongoing Russia investigation.

With Sessions out, Whitaker will assume control of the investigation, according to the Justice Department. Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the department, told Mother Jones, “The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice.”

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is known to be looking into Sessions’ own meetings with Russians while he was a Trump campaign surrogate, and the role he played overseeing the campaign’s foreign policy and contacts.

Trump’s aggressive attacks left many wondering why the president chose to keep Sessions in the role for so long, instead preferring to undermine him and the department he led.

Dan Friedman contributed reporting to this story.

Image credit: Ting Shen/Xinhua/ZUMA; Starmax/Newscom/ZUMA

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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