Trump regrets picking Sessions as attorney general
US President Donald Trump says he would not have chosen Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he knew that the former senator would later on recuse himself from a noisy investigation into the Trump team’s alleged “collusion” with Russia.
Sessions announced in March that he would step aside from the US Justice Department’s Russian inquiry after reports revealed that he had discussed the 2016 election campaign with Russian ambassador to America Sergey Kislyak.
"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 told the New York Times in an interview on Wednesday.
Last month, the US media reported that Sessions had offered to resign after running into issues with Trump over his recusal.
In his wide-ranging interview with the Times, Trump also blasted Sessions over his failure to reveal the meetings during his Senate confirmation hearings.
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“Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers,” the new Republican president said. “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t.”
He said Session’s decision was “extremely unfair.”
Sessions, 70, was confirmed by the Senate on February 8 to lead the powerful US Justice Department.
An early supporter of Trump, the former senator became America’s top law enforcement official after two decades of representing the state of Alabama in Congress.
‘Family, Trump’s red line in Russia probe’
Asked how he would feel if his family was dragged into the investigation, Trump said “that’s a violation.”
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., has been under fire over the past few days after admitting that he had met with a Russian lawyer last year to get damaging information on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, his father’s Democratic rival in the election.
Donald Jr. and his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also present at the meeting, were scheduled to testify in the Senate on July 26.
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