Not to interrupt everybody’s health care sigh of relief this weekend but appointing John Kelly as chief of staff could well be the first move towards installing a Trump devotee at the Department of Justice to start using law enforcement to protect his allies and jail his rivals like Trump has always wanted.
Personally, I think Scott Pruitt is the more likely pick as the former state attorney general and chief law enforcement officer for the state of Oklahoma but Bump describes how it could work in detail.
From Philip Bump at the Washington Post:
How Rick Perry could fire Robert Mueller
“The Vacancies Act says that — notwithstanding any kind of other rule, like the regular DOJ succession statute — that the president, and only the president, can appoint an acting head of the Department of Justice to that position as long as that person has been confirmed by the Senate,” Butler explained. “So if there’s another person who works in the federal government whose job requires presidential appointment and then confirmation by the Senate, then that person is entitled to be put in, in this case, as the acting attorney general.”
So, in other words, if Sessions were to resign, President Trump could appoint, say, Rick Perry, the secretary of energy, to be the acting attorney general? “The answer is yes,” Butler said, since Perry has already been appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate.
But there’s a catch.
“The statute says that it applies when the current officeholder ‘dies, resigns or is otherwise unable to perform the functions and duties of the office,’” he said. “That suggests that there might be a difference and the Act might not apply if the person is fired.” So if Trump gets Sessions to quit, Rick Perry could be made acting attorney general. If Sessions is fired? It’s less clear.
From Mike Allen at Axios back on July 20th:
For weeks, President Trump has been privately expressing frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and has even told aides he regretted appointing him:
- Trump views Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation as an act of weakness that made the situation exponentially worse for the White House.
- POTUS has mused that he could have named Sessions — a crucial early backer of his campaign — to be Secretary of Homeland Security instead. (Although he's very pleased with his choice there, Gen. John Kelly.)
Yesterday, Trump went public with his beef, telling the N.Y. Times in a stunning 50-minute interview in the Oval Office: "Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else."
UPDATE - Politico spoke to several Trump administration sources on the subject:
Separately, department staffers have been talking about the possibility that the role might go to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to two sources with contacts at DHS, but a person close to the Trump administration said he's unlikely to get the job.
Which direction Trump takes could have a dramatic effect on soothing or stoking the uncertainty gripping his White House….
Picking Sessions, meanwhile, would empower Trump to select a new attorney general who could exert more control over the Russia probe, perhaps an ally like Rudy Giuliani. But that option would likely set up a major clash with senators of both parties.
One source familiar with the process cautioned that it's "very early," and things could change in the coming hours and days.
It could be Trump genuinely dislikes Sessions now and wants him to resign from government period, otherwise I expect to hear next week how vital it is to the nation’s safety for Sessions to run the DHS.