Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions Tuesday again defended his recusal from the Russia probe, saying he fell on the sword to save President Trump from further criticism.
“I did what the law required me to do,” Mr. Sessions wrote in an open letter to the people of Alabama where he is battling for his old seat in the U.S. Senate.
“I was a central figure in the campaign and was also a subject of and witness in the investigation and could obviously not be legally involved in investigating myself,” he wrote. “If I had ignored and broken the law, the Democrats would have used that to severely damage the president.”
Mr. Sessions wrote that he had offered his resignation instead of recusal, but Mr. Trump wouldn’t accept it.
Mr. Sessions also suggested that he was among the first to push for removing former FBI Director James Comey to give the bureau “a fresh start.”
“I concluded that Comey was driven by ego, lacked self-discipline and lacked the judgment necessary to lead an agency as critical as the FBI, as was evidenced by the completely improper way he declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton,” he wrote.
Mr. Sessions has been constantly on the defensive about his tenure as Attorney General as the Senate race with former Auburn football heats up. The two will face off in a primary runoff on July 14 with the winner facing U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat, in November.
On Friday, Mr. Trump slammed his former attorney general, telling “Fox and Friends” that he felt obligated to appoint him to the job and called Mr. Sessions “very weak and very sad.”
Mr. Trump also speculated that if current Attorney General William P. Barr had been running the Justice Department during the start of his administration there would not have been a Russia probe.
“No, there wouldn’t be. He would have stopped it immediately….Jeff Sessions was a disaster. I made him — I didn’t want him attorney general but he was the first senator to endorse me so I felt a bit of an obligation.”
Mr. Sessions became a target of the president’s public frustration in early 2017 when he recused himself from the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he had two pre-election meetings with the former Russian ambassador.
