Why did Jeff Sessions, who announced on Thursday afternoon that he will recuse himself from the Russia election investigation, wait until now to do it? The answer is that in his first 21 days in the Justice Department, he simply didn’t need to.
The FBI-Justice Department investigation was already going when Sessions was sworn in on February 9. It was going before Sessions got there, and it kept going when he arrived. Word is that Sessions was not faced with any “decision point” in which he was required to make some sort of judgment on whether to continue, or expand, or close down, or in some other way decide the future of any aspect of the investigation. Had such a point arrived, Sessions would likely have made a decision on recusal long before today.
Still, Sessions knew recusal was a question he would have to consider. At his brief news conference Thursday, he said that “shortly after arriving” at the Justice Department, he met with senior officials and began mulling the recusal issue. “In fact, on Monday of this week, we set a meeting for today for a final decision about handling this,” Sessions told reporters. The decision was to recuse himself, which he called the “proper decision.”
For those who still wonder why Sessions did not act sooner, there’s another answer: While there were no decision points reached in the Russia election investigation, there were a lot of other issues that demanded the attorney general’s immediate attention.
After Democrats delayed his nomination in the Senate, Sessions arrived in the Justice Department as the sole confirmed Trump nominee. There was a lot to do. On one hand, Sessions was forced by events to act — for example, when an approaching court date forced him to decide whether to go ahead with the department’s defense of the Obama administration’s transgender policy. (He chose not to go forward.) Another court date forced him to decide the department’s position on a voting rights case in Texas. (He decided to abandon another Obama case.) And then Sessions devoted a lot of time to staff questions — three weeks after arriving, he remains the only Senate-confirmed Trump appointee at work in the Justice Department — and to building relationships with employees in the various divisions inside the building and across the country.
On a completely unrelated matter, I talked briefly with Sessions late Monday, as he prepared to give a speech outlining a new Justice Department approach to violent crime. We stayed mostly on that topic, but toward the end, I asked him, in light of the transgender decision, what other Obama policies would come up for re-thinking. He dodged the question, but offered a little insight into how busy he has been.
“Every day there’s some new case, there’s some new civil matter, some injunction, some lawsuit that raises all kinds of issues that are interesting and difficult for anybody,” Sessions said. “It’s a fun place to be, but it’s not easy.”
Sessions was thinking about recusal even before he became attorney general. As he prepared for his confirmation hearing, he and his aides looked closely at recusal standards because they felt certain that Sessions would be asked hypothetical questions about whether he would recuse himself from this or that Trump-related investigation should he become attorney general.
Specifically on the Russia issue, Sessions prepared to answer the question of whether he would recuse himself if there were evidence of Russian interference in the presidential campaign. Indeed, Sessions got a similar question, and answered, “I think it would be incumbent upon anybody who’s holding the office of attorney general at that time to carefully think his way through that, to seek the advice and to follow the normal or appropriate special prosecutor standards. And so I would intend to do that.”
And that is pretty much what Sessions said ever since, including Thursday morning, when the media storm began. “I have said whenever it’s appropriate, I will recuse myself,” Sessions told NBC. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Just hours later, Sessions announced that yes, he will recuse himself. By his account, the decision was a previously scheduled affair. Others will point to the media firestorm that preceded Sessions’ announcement. Whatever the case, when it comes to the most controversial investigation of the young Trump administration, the attorney general is out of the picture.
