Jeff Sessions (Generated by JG JPEG Library)
Donald Trump never liked the way Jeff Sessions couldn’t kill the Russia investigation — on account of being up to his eyeballs in it himself — and he always wanted to kick his caricature of an AG to the curb. Today, after a brutal midterm beating and facing the prospect of a dump of damaging indictments from the Mueller camp, the White House has asked for and received a resignation from Jeff Sessions.
We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018
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Of course, Whitaker is not the person whose supposed to be the Acting Attorney General according to the department’s defined succession plan, but we blew all those rules to hell when we fired Sally Yates so we’re just flying blind here. To recap, there is a statutory basis for presidents selecting pretty much whoever they want to act as a cabinet official but there are also specific procedures for the Justice Department to prevent presidents from, you know, firing people investigating them and replacing them with loyalists. As one might expect in this overlapping morass, Trump’s going with “the interpretation that lets him do whatever he wants.”
And as you might imagine, the guy who wrote editorials about the Mueller investigation being improper is the guy the White House is tapping.
So Jeff Sessions is gone. Robert Mueller is probably about to get fired. Lindsey Graham is measuring drapes. Chaos holds sway.
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Here’s the resignation letter:
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.