Report: Trump lobbied Sessions to stay on Russia investigation
The White House's top lawyer lobbied attorney general Jeff Sessions to remain in charge of the investigation into whether President Trump's associates helped a Russian campaign disrupt the 2016 election, the New York Times reported Thursday.
Citing two unnamed people with knowledge of the incident, the Times reported that Trump gave explicit instructions to White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II to stop Sessions from recusing himself in the Justice Department investigation.
"Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him," according to the Times report.
The unidentified sources said Trump was expecting Sessions, his top law enforcement official, to act as a shield to protect the president, as he believed Robert F. Kennedy had done for his brother John F. Kennedy in the 1960s.
Trump at one point asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”, the Times reported. He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.
The request by Trump is seen as a key point in the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is spearheading the probe into whether Trump obstructed federal investigators during the Russia inquiry.
Congressional investigators are heading into 2018 with no immediate end in sight to their probes into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
Mueller's inquiry appears to be gaining steam. It has also produced guilty pleas and pledges of cooperation from ex-campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI.
White House special counsel Ty Cobb has expressed optimism that Mueller's investigation is winding down, indicating earlier this month that all interviews that investigators requested of White House staffers have been completed.
Yet some analysts cautioned that there are no obvious signs of a finish line in sight.
"That may be the view from Mr. Cobb's eyes, but I would be shocked if (Mueller) was done with the White House inner circle," said Ron Hosko, a former assistant FBI director who worked for Mueller when Mueller was FBI director. "All of these indictments, guilty pleas and interviews could be just round one."