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President Donald Trump launched an aggressive new attack against Jeff Sessions on Wednesday, suggesting that his attorney general wasn’t doing his job.
“I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” Trump told Hill.TV in an exclusive Oval Office interview that was described as “free-wheeling” on the outlet’s website Wednesday.
The president has railed against Sessions regularly since the attorney general’s March 2017 decision to recuse himself from the federal investigation into Russian election meddling, which includes probing contacts between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
But Trump told Hill.TV that his disappointment with Sessions goes beyond the probe, which is being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. “I’m not happy at the border, I’m not happy with numerous things, not just this,” he said.
Trump said he was reluctant to give Sessions the job in the first place.
“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 also made clear that he thought Sessions performed poorly during his confirmation hearings, saying his answers were “confusing.”
During the hearings, Sessions failed to disclose two meeting with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, prompting lawmakers on both side of the aisle to call for him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein became the Justice Department official overseeing the probe, and named Mueller as special counsel after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
“We’ll see how it goes with Jeff. I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed,” Trump told Hill.TV, while dancing around the question of whether or not he planned to fire Sessions.
“We’ll see what happens. A lot of people have asked me to do that. And I guess I study history, and I say I just want to leave things alone, but it was very unfair what he did,” Trump said.