ADVERTISEMENT

Trump Wouldn't Have Appointed Sessions if He Knew He'd Recuse Himself

President Donald Trump (L) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R) / Getty
July 19, 2017

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Trump called Sessions' decision to recuse himself "very unfair to the president," according to an interview with the New York Times.

"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.

"Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president," he said. "How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I'm not going to take you.'"

"It's extremely unfair — and that's a mild word — to the president," he said.

Trump also criticized Sessions' answers during his Senate confirmation hearing. Sessions had said that he had not met with any Russian officials, despite meeting twice with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.

"Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers," Trump said. "He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren't."

Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary.