President Donald Trump attacked his Attorney General Jeff Sessions anew in an interview published Wednesday, deriding the official who is the key obstacle to the White House halting the increasingly menacing Russia collusion probe. "I don't have an attorney general. It's very sad," Trump told the online site Hill.TV, stepping up apparent pressure on Sessions to resign.
"I'm so sad over Jeff Sessions because he came to me. He was the first senator that endorsed me. And he wanted to be attorney general, and I didn't see it," he said. Trump criticized the nation's top law enforcement official for recusing himself from involvement in the investigation of whether the president's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election.
He also said he was frustrated with Sessions over the continued flow of illegal immigrants into the country across the Mexican border. "I'm not happy at the border, I'm not happy with numerous things, not just this," he told the online video unit of The Hill, a news site that covers the US Congress and politics.
"It turned out he didn't have to recuse himself. Actually, the FBI reported shortly thereafter any reason for him to recuse himself. And it's very sad what happened." Sessions shocked Trump on March 2, 2017 which he officially announced he would not have any oversight or involvement in the Russia probe, now in the hands of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Sessions took the action because he himself had been an official in Trump's campaign, and because he had contacts with Russia's ambassador during the election battle.