Despite the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath about his contacts with Russia and refused to correct the record for weeks, even after national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired for a similar infraction, Sessions is “absolutely” the guy who should be picking the person in charge of the Russia investigation.
When White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was quizzed about the appropriateness of Sessions selecting the person who will lead the investigation that Sessions himself could be implicated in, she responded:
In terms of whether or not Attorney General Sessions should have a role—look, the FBI is doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation. I know everybody in this room, and probably most of the media around the world, would like to think that's the FBI's sole responsibility, but that's probably one of the smallest things that they've got going on their plate in the 20,000 employees that work there, and so he absolutely should have a role in seeing who runs that agency and that department.
There you have it, folks. The investigated should absolutely choose their own investigator because that person will be doing other things too and this Russian investigation isn't really that big a deal.
Another absolute? Americans should "absolutely" have "full confidence" in what Donald Trump says and does—even though just weeks ago both he and press secretary Sean Spicer expressed "confidence" in Comey.
So let's get this straight: Huckabee Sanders said Trump "lost confidence in Director Comey, and frankly he’d been considering letting Director Comey go, since the day he was elected.” In other words, that "lost confidence" happened about a week after Trump toured the nation praising Comey for having the "guts" to reopen the Clinton investigation. But then Trump regained confidence last month, only to lose that confidence again this week. But take it from Huckabee Sanders...
Absolutely, you can take full confidence in the words of the president.
Fascinating, especially since the only assurance she could give that no more Justice Department firings were in the works was: "Not that i'm aware of today." Because, frankly, who knows when people are going to get fired around here. Certainly not the press team, or Congress, or FBI officials.
Along with all that confidence we should have in Trump’s words, we're also expected to believe that Trump was greatly troubled that Comey disrupted the "chain of command" at the Justice Department by holding a press conference last summer but refusing to tell then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch what he would say.
Huckabee Sanders said that when Trump met Monday with Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, they outlined Comey's "atrocities in circumventing the chain of command." That finally moved Trump to take action, she said. Because no one loves order more than Donald "seat of the pants" Trump, who routinely pits his staff against each other to see who will emerge triumphant.
It's all really making sense now. Trump had confidence before he didn't have confidence, which was before he regained it only to fire Comey weeks later after he understood the “atrocities” Comey committed.
And Jeff Sessions, whose actions as a chief adviser to the Trump campaign were potentially being scrutinized by the FBI, recommended firing the investigator and will now play a key role in choosing who will take over the investigation into his actions and that of other Trump associates.