Most Democrats opposed the attorney general\u2019s confirmation and view him as \u201ca disaster\u201d on policy. But to protect the Mueller investigation, they\u2019re now fighting to help him keep his job.<\/b>
\nIn the long history of strange bedfellows in politics, there may be no more awkward alliance than the one that\u2019s developed over the past year between congressional Democrats and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Senate Democrats were aghast when Donald Trump, then the president-elect, named one of his staunchest campaign supporters to lead the Justice Department a few weeks after his surprise election victory. They viewed Sessions as a virulently anti-immigrant legislator with a racist past, and as a Trump loyalist who would do the president\u2019s bidding as attorney general while blocking criminal-justice reform and taking a buzz saw to civil and voting rights. All but one Democrat\u2014Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia\u2014voted against Sessions\u2019s confirmation. And Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fought so strenuously to defeat him that Senate Republicans used an obscure parliamentary rule to silence her.
As attorney general, Sessions has confirmed many of Democrats\u2019 worst fears when it comes to policy, and in the early months of the Trump administration, a number of them called on him to resign over one controversy or another. But after the president\u2019s latest round of attacks on his attorney general, and new comments from Republicans suggesting that he might be fired, Democrats now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of wanting Sessions to stay for one simple reason: He\u2019s one of the only people standing between Trump and an abrupt end to Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation into Russian collusion and obstruction of justice.
Jeff Sessions\u2019s agenda could erase many of the legal gains of the civil-rights movement .
\u201cWhile I have opposed many of the actions taken by Attorney General Sessions, it would be unacceptable for the president to fire him now in order to install someone willing to subvert the Mueller investigation,\u201d Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Thursday. \u201cI, for one, believe Congress must do all it can to stop such an act.\u201d Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, another Sessions critic, urged Democrats to go to the polls in November in part to protect a man he voted against last year. \u201cIf Democrats don\u2019t win, Trump is emboldened, Sessions and Mueller are gone,\u201d Murphy tweeted Friday. \u201cWe slide closer to a banana republic.\u201d
Under pressure from Democrats after his previously undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador became public last year, Sessions announced in March 2017\u2014just six weeks after taking over the Justice Department\u2014that he was recusing himself from the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign was involved. That move paved the way for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller as special counsel after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey later that spring.
Because Rosenstein is now overseeing the Mueller probe, replacing Sessions would mean the new attorney general would have the authority to restrict or end the investigation.
Sessions\u2019s recusal infuriated Trump, and their relationship has never been the same. Several times over the past year, the president has lashed out at the attorney general in interviews or over Twitter, accusing him of disloyalty and saying he never would have appointed him if he knew he was planning to recuse himself. The latest volley occurred this week, in the aftermath of the conviction of Paul Manafort, Trump\u2019s former campaign manager, and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, his longtime personal attorney.
\u201cHe never took control of the Justice Department,\u201d Trump said in a Fox News interview broadcast Thursday. He again faulted Sessions for stepping aside and challenged him to investigate Democrats and other Trump critics for \u201ccollusion,\u201d the same allegations dogging the president and his associates.
Sessions has mostly laid low in the face of the president\u2019s taunts, but on Thursday he issued a rare statement defending himself. \u201cI took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in,\u201d he said, listing areas, like immigration enforcement, where he has clearly advanced Trump\u2019s agenda. \u201cWhile I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action.\u201d
Senate Republicans have generally tried to protect their former colleague, warning Trump that it would be all but impossible to confirm a successor if Sessions was fired. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley even said at one point in 2017 that he would have no time to hold confirmation hearings on a replacement. But in recent days, that wall of support appears to have weakened a bit.
Trump\u2019s grasp on the Republican Party is stronger than ever .
Grassley said he would be able to find time for hearings, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has become a key Trump ally, floated the possibility that the president would replace Sessions after the midterm elections. \u201cThe president\u2019s entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that\u2019s qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,\u201d Graham told reporters .
Despite Graham\u2019s invitation, other Senate Republicans pushed back. The party\u2019s second-highest-ranking senator, John Cornyn of Texas, said it \u201cwould be bad for the country, it would be bad for the president, it would be bad for the Department of Justice for him to be forced out under these circumstances.\u201d And Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a member of the Judiciary Committee, warned in a floor speech: \u201cI find it really difficult to envision any circumstance where I would vote to confirm a successor to Jeff Sessions if he is fired because he is executing his job rather than choosing to act like a partisan hack.\u201d
With the GOP\u2019s narrow 51\u201349 majority, the loss of even one or two Republican votes could make it impossible for a new attorney general to win confirmation. Trump\u2019s only other option would be to temporarily move another Senate-confirmed member of the Cabinet to the Justice Department, but that action, too, would likely be met with outrage from Democrats and some Republicans.
Trump\u2019s firing of Sessions, warned Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, \u201cwould likely spark a constitutional crisis and further unravel any shred of legitimacy that the president has remaining.\u201d
That is not to say, however, that Jeffries\u2014a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a close ally of the party leadership\u2014is a fan of the attorney general. \u201cHe has been a disaster as attorney general on almost every single issue,\u201d he told me Friday, \u201cwith the exception of taking a hands-off approach regarding the Mueller investigation.\u201d
Jeffries acknowledged that the calculus might change if Democrats win at least the House majority in November, giving them more power to protect Mueller on their own and making Sessions expendable. Winning the Senate would mean they could block confirmation of a new attorney general without help from Republicans.
But for the moment, in a choice between a \u201cdisaster\u201d and a constitutional crisis, Jeffries is siding with disaster. And so, it seems, is almost every other member of his party.<\/p>\n

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