Sessions says he’ll stay on the job ‘as long as that is appropriate’

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said Thursday he has no immediate plans to resign as the nation’s top lawman despite President Trump’s sharp criticism of him for recusing himself from the investigation into Russia’s interference into the 2016 presidential election.

Trump said in an interview Wednesday that he never would have chosen Sessions to head the Justice Department if he had known Sessions would remove himself from the high-stakes probe, a decision that ultimately led to appointment of a special counsel.

Sessions told reporters at a news conference that he still shares Trump’s priorities to crack down on crime, and said he is focused on leading the department.

“We love this job, we love the department, and I plan on continuing to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said. “I’m totally confident we can continue to run this office in an effective way.”

In the interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, Trump slammed Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the FBI investigation of alleged Trump campaign cooperation with Russia as “very unfair to the president.”

“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.

Trump’s criticism of Sessions was especially striking because the former four-term U.S. senator from Alabama was one of Trump’s earliest and most loyal campaign advisors. His comments also amounted to an attack on the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI.

“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,” Trump told the Times.

Sessions announced his recusal in March after news reports revealed that he had failed to tell his Senate confirmation hearing about several private meetings he held with the Russian ambassador during the campaign.

Sessions later said that he stepped back from the probe to avoid a conflict of interest because he had played such a prominent role in Trump’s presidential campaign.

Sessions did not say Thursday if he had talked with Trump since the interview was published or if a conversation was scheduled. A Justice Department spokesman said he was not aware of any planned meetings between Sessions and the president.

In the interview, Trump also excoriated both Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, the No. 2 man in the Justice Department, and Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who Rosenstein appointed in May to lead the Russia investigation.

Trump said he was unhappy that Rosenstein, a career federal prosecutor and former U.S. attorney in Maryland, came from mostly Democratic Baltimore.

Trump made clear that he was growing impatient with the FBI investigation and said Mueller would be committing a “violation” if he moved beyond the Russian meddling in the 2016 election began looking into Trump’s business interests.

Rosenstein did not directly respond to Trump’s criticisms during the news conference Thursday.

“As the attorney general said, we are working here every day to advance the priorities of the Department of Justice,” he said.