Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who lied to the Senate about meeting with Russian officials while acting as a member of Trump's transition team, is now interviewing candidates to replace fired FBI Director James Comey. He is doing so after vowing to recuse himself from decisions involving the investigation into Donald Trump's campaign and Russian hacking, and he is doing so after Donald Trump himself admitted that investigation played a role in his abrupt termination of Comey.
So this is a farce from the get-go, and it's made only more farcical by the appearance of hyper partisan Republican Sen. John Cornyn, of all people, on their short list.
Over the weekend, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein met with the eight candidates for permanent FBI director, and no more interviews are currently scheduled, according to a U.S. official familiar with the process.
The idea of the venomously partisan John Cornyn leading the FBI is so ridiculous that we can only assume it to be a ruse meant to make the other candidates look better by comparison. Also on the list is George W. Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, but of the partisan types former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers looks to be the one lighting up the hey-maybe-that-wouldn't-be-entirely-insane D.C. insider buttons.
He has been endorsed by the FBI Agents Association for being an allegedly nonpartisan investigator; he was also a member of the Trump transition team, which would seem to belie such theories of rationality. (Interestingly, though, he apparently has fallen out of favor with the Trumpites for not Blaming Hillary Enough in his Benghazi! report. We presume, therefore, that he will not be chosen for FBI director unless he has private assurances for Trump and Sessions that he has rethought his position on that.)
You would think that Jeff Sessions, if he was not crooked or an idiot, would deem members of Donald Trump's own transition team to be summarily unhireable for the job of investigating Donald Trump's transition team. You would think.
Also on the alleged short list, according to Bloomberg: the FBI's Adam Lee and Andrew McCabe; New York Court of Appeals associate justice Michael Garcia; Alberto Gonzales-era ex-assistant attorney general Alice Fisher; and ex-judge Henry Hudson, made famous in conservative circles for ruling against a key provision of Obamacare before getting slapped down by the 4th Circuit.
Then again, Trump considers himself a showman, so it would be entirely like him to pick someone from Fox News and simply declare them to be his choice. We can surmise that it won't be anyone who, in Team Trump’s estimation, will be eager to pursue the nation's Russia investigations. And that is a hell of a thing, right there—but that is where we are.