President Trump’s original Chief of Staff Reince Priebus suggested Sunday that there’s nothing Attorney General Jeff Sessions could do to get back in the president’s good graces.
Priebus said he didn’t think it would be good for the president if Sessions left the Justice Department, ‘but I also think the president has made up his mind in regards to how he feels about the recusal.’
‘He feels that was the first sin, the original sin, and he feels slighted by it,’ Priebus said on ABC’s This Week. ‘He doesn’t like it and he’s not going to let it go.’
Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (pictured) said Sunday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Russian recusal was his ‘original sin,’ according to President Trump, and the president would never ‘let it go’
President Trump (left) called his Attorney General Jeff Sessions (right) ‘DISGRACEFUL!’ this week after Sessions decided the FISA abuse should be looked into by the Department of Justice’s inspector general. Trump would have simply preferred a DOJ lawyer
‘So I think when he feels frustrated by the Russia probe and all of those things that he watches on television or he reads about in the paper. He feels slighted by it and he’s not going to let it go,’ Preibus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, continued.
This week was a particularly tough one for Trump-Sessions relations with the president hammering Sessions on Twitter Wednesday morning for his decision to have FISA abuse probed by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General.
‘Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc.,’ Trump said. ‘Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy?’ he added.
‘Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!’ Trump said.
Sessions didn’t take the criticism laying down.
In a statement he said that he ‘initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary.’
He also defended his standing as the department’s top official.
‘As long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and the Constitution,’ Sessions said.
On Wednesday night, Sessions went out to dinner with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Solicitor General Noel Francisco right across from the Trump hotel in Washington.
A source close to Sessions told Axios, the publication that first reported the dinner, that the meeting was ‘in no way planned as pushback or an act of solidarity against the president.’
On Saturday, President Trump joked about his tense relationship with Sessions.
‘Attorney General Sessions is here with us tonight,’ Trump said at the annual Gridiron Dinner, a gathering of journalists and administration figures.
Sessions was seated about 10 feet away from Trump at the dais.
‘I offered him a ride over and he recused himself.’
‘But that’s OK,’ Trump added.