Why didn’t James Comey tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions that President Trump was pressuring him to drop the investigation into Mike Flynn? This is a fair question that will be used by Republicans to try to discredit Comey’s testimony.
Comey, who seems very prepared for all of these challenges, laid out exactly why he and FBI senior leadership didn’t go to Sessions with this information, and the reasons why call Sessions’ behavior into question.
Comey’s opening statement for his testimony tomorrow he writes that he told Sessions “to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me†and he didn’t reply.
After the meeting in the Oval, during which Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, Comey discussed his notes with Senior FBI leadership, and he notes, “We also concluded that, given that it was a one -on-one conversation, there was nothing available to corroborate my account. We concluded it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russia.”
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Comey will say (my bold), “Shortly afterwards, I spoke with Attorney General Sessions in person to pass along the President’s concerns about leaks. I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me.”
“I told the AG that what had just happened – him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind – was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply. For the reasons discussed above, I did not mention that the President broached the FBI’s potential investigation of General Flynn.”
Add senior FBI leadership to the roster of Comey witnesses and if government were operating as it is supposed to, Jeff Sessions should be under investigation.
While Sessions eventually recused himself from the investigation, he is at the very least a witness to the President demanding to see the FBI Director alone, and when the FBI Director told Sessions that this was inappropriate (which Sessions already knows), Sessions said nothing.
Comey’s opening statement makes it clear that he and senior FBI felt they couldn’t rely on Jeff Sessions to do the right thing, to protect the FBI investigation from interference by the President. Comey doesn’t come out and say that, but the firewall of independence was violated repeatedly and Sessions is a witness to the President doing this. A decent AG would not have stood for it.
Jeff Sessions reportedly mentioned resigning around the time Trump publicly humiliated Sessions over the second version of of Trump’s travel ban, which Trump himself signed so it’s unclear why Trump blamed Sessions other than this is what Trump does.
Sessions shouldn’t have to resign. He wasn’t fit for this office to begin with, and if Comey’s testimony is true, Sessions shouldn’t be the Attorney General. Sessions is already compromised by being a part of the Russia investigation as a part of Trump’s transition team that is under investigation.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that Jeff Sessions is THE problem. Jeff Sessions is a part of the Trump problem, but he is not the source of the Trump problem. Trump crapping on Sessions in public is just part of what Trump does, it’s how he treats the people who work for him; it’s not an elaborate set up. Trump is mad at Sessions because he blames Jeff Sessions for the Trump Russia investigation growing — Trump is mad that Sessions recused himself from overseeing the FBI’s Trump Russia investigation, because that meant that Sessions couldn’t stop the investigation as well as he can just being the boss of the person overseeing it, which is where it currently stands if you can believe that.
According to Comey’s statement, Sessions helped Trump by not protecting the independence of the FBI investigation from Trump. So Sessions helped Trump, he just didn’t help Trump enough to please Trump.
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