WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump said Attorney General Jeff Sessions' job is safe at least until the midterm elections in November.
"I just would love to have him do a great job," Trump said Thursday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News. Asked if he'd keep Sessions beyond November, he declined to comment.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Sessions in private and in public for recusing himself in March 2017 from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to conduct what's become a wide-ranging probe, including whether people around Trump conspired with the Russians and whether the president sought to obstruct justice.
Trump also has ridiculed Sessions, a former Republican senator and an early supporter of his presidential candidacy, as "weak" for failing to aggressively pursue Republican allegations of anti-Trump bias in the Justice Department and FBI. Trump has tried to no avail to pressure Sessions to quit, which would open the way to appointing a successor who could oust Mueller or rein in his inquiry.
Sessions' inability to "control" his department was "a regrettable thing," Trump said in an interview last week with Fox News, adding that the Justice Department seems "to go after a lot of Republicans."
Sessions responded then in a defiant statement, saying, "While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations."
Trump's comments Thursday were in keeping with the predictions of some key Republicans in Congress, who are now saying they expect the president to oust Sessions after the elections in November despite warning him in the past that the Senate wouldn't muster the votes to confirm a successor.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Tuesday that the relationship between Trump and Sessions is "beyond repair" and that the issues are "deeper" than the attorney general's recusal.
"He is not the only man in the country that can be attorney general. He is a fine man. I'm not asking for him to be fired. But the relationship is not working," Graham said on NBC's "Today." "Is there somebody who is highly qualified that has the confidence of the president, and will also understand their job is to protect Mueller? Yes, I think we can find that person after the election if that is what the president wants."
Trump also said during the Bloomberg interview that Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, didn't betray him when he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation into Michael Cohen.
When asked whether Weisselberg had turned on him or put him in legal jeopardy, Trump said: "100 percent he didn't. He's a wonderful guy." The president added that the cooperation was related to "a very limited period of time."
Trump's comments were his first public remarks about Weisselberg since news broke last week that he had received immunity in a federal investigation into the finances of Cohen, the president's former lawyer and fixer.
Weisselberg's immunity is tied to his cooperation with the probe into payments facilitated by Cohen to two women who threatened to go public with their claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. The Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen the $130,000 he paid to the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, according to court records.
Cohen pleaded guilty to two campaign finance crimes concerning the payments, which he said were related to the 2016 election. He told the court that Trump had directed him to help make illegal hush-money payments. Trump, who has denied the alleged affairs, has yet to give a clear explanation of his involvement in the payments.
At least three employees were involved in the effort. Weisselberg, according to The Wall Street Journal, was one of them.
Weisselberg's importance to the president eclipses his title. After more than 40 years serving the Trump family, including the president's father, Fred, he's the only person not named Trump whom Donald Trump trusts with his money. He's negotiated Trump's loans, is a co-signer on his accounts, helps arrange his taxes, and, with Trump's sons Don Jr. and Eric, oversees the trust that holds all the president's assets.
He "knows of every dime that leaves the building," Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie wrote of Weisselberg last year in a book about their time running Trump's presidential campaign.
