President Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation.
When Don McGahn, the president’s White House counsel, was unsuccessful, the president erupted in anger in front of multiple White House officials, telling them that he needed an attorney general who would protect him – the way Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy protected his brother, President John F. Kennedy, according to details in the New York Times.
The president then asked, ‘Where’s my Roy Cohn?’ referring to his long-dead former lawyer, who had ben Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s chief counsel during the lawmaker’s controversial hunt for Communists in the 1950s, the Times reported.
President Trump (left) asked White House Counsel Don McGahn to lobby Attorney General Jeff Sessions (right) not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation
The New York Times reported that President Trump yelled at his aides that he wanted an attorney general like Robert F. Kennedy (left), who the president said protected his brother, President John F. Kennedy (right)
White House Counsel Don McGahn was directed to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Russia investigation, which he did, leading the president to have an outburst in which he yelled, ‘Where’s my Roy Cohn?’
The Times was the first to report that Trump had McGahn lobby Sessions, however the Associated Press spoke to three people on the condition of anonymity who corroborated the newspaper’s report.
The conversation between McGahn and Sessions took place on the president’s orders and occurred just before the attorney general announced he would step aside from the ongoing inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to an Associated Press source with knowledge of the interaction.
Two other individuals confirmed details of the conversation to the AP.
The episode is known to special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and is likely of interest to them as they look into whether Trump’s actions as president, including the May firing of FBI Director James Comey, amount to improper efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation.
Investigators recently concluded a round of interviews with current and former White House officials, including McGahn and former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Reached Thursday evening, Trump personal attorney John Dowd said, ‘I know nothing about that,’ and hung up.
Jay Sekulow, another of the president’s personal lawyers, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sessions announced on March 2 that he would recuse himself from the Russia probe.
He said at the time that he should not oversee any investigation into a campaign for which he was an active and vocal supporter, though the recusal also followed the revelation that he had had two previously undisclosed interactions during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States. At his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing, he had said he had no meetings with Russians.
But soon before the announcement, with White House officials anticipating that Sessions might be poised to step aside, McGahn spoke to Sessions by phone and urged him against recusing himself from the investigation.
During the conversation, according to people familiar with the matter, McGahn argued to Sessions that there was no reason or basis at that time for him to recuse.
One person said McGahn also told him that recusal would do nothing to resolve concerns over whether Sessions had given a misleading answer at his confirmation hearing.
Sessions ultimately declined the urging, and McGahn ultimately accepted the conclusion of officials who believed that Sessions should recuse.
Sessions’ recusal left Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in charge of the Russia investigation.
But once Trump fired Comey two months later, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, the former FBI director, to run the investigation and to report to him.
Four people, including Trump’s former campaign chairman and national security adviser, have been charged so far in the investigation.
The Sessions recusal has been a sore spot for Trump for months, with the president publicly deriding the decision and lamenting his selection of the former Alabama senator as his attorney general.
In a July interview with The Times, Trump said, ‘Well, 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.’