When President Trump nominated then-Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to be Attorney General, Trump was hopeful that Sessions would be a no-nonsense AG, upholding the law on the many positions Sessions had discussed as Senator and taking swift and decisive action against those parties President Trump deemed to be enemies and criminals working against the state. Many Americans desired a return from the lawlessness and abuses that had been committed under the Obama administration and former Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder.
Yet, since taking on his new job, Sessions has been very good at talking tough, but has neglected to prosecute most of the figures both Trump and he previously railed against, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose use of a private email server in the Obama years was a clear violation of government regulations and whose messages put national security at risk.
It’s been confirmed that the FBI under former Director James Comey interrogated Clinton for a mere two and a half hours and did not even conduct her questioning under oath. She was allowed to turn her technological evidence over of her own accord without any search warrants being executed, and questioning of Clinton resulted in much discussion of her lawyers’ personal lives rather than matters of substance.
Other cases Sessions has declined to take up include those of the politicization of the IRS, which deliberately targeted Tea Party political groups under the stewardship of former Unit Director Lois Lerner and the “Fast and Furious” gun proliferation scandal that was aided by previous Attorney General Holder.
President Trump has indicated that he’s displeased with Sessions’ lack of action on these and other matters and has said he wouldn’t have appointed the Senator as Attorney General if he knew Sessions would recuse himself from the investigation into Russian collusion that’s now being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
On July 24, Trump tweeted, “So why aren’t the committees and investigators and, of course, our beleaguered AG looking into Crooked Hillary [Clinton]’s crimes and Russian relations?”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina backed Sessions’ inaction. “Prosecutorial decisions should be based on applying facts to the law without a hint of political motivation,” he said. “To do otherwise is to run away from the longstanding American tradition of separating the law from politics regardless of party.”
“This country does not punish its political enemies,” testified Sessions to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing for the role of Attorney General. Sessions claimed his negative remarks about Clinton during the 2016 election cycle disqualified him from investigating her. “I believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kinds of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton.”
On the IRS issue, Sessions has openly declared there would be no prosecutions at the tax agency. This is despite the fact that Unit Director Lerner deliberately misled federal investigators while other IRS employees destroyed myriad documents and hid evidence.
Present IRS Director John Koskinen stonewalled Congress on the matter and may have committed perjury, according to a number of prominent Republican Congressmen. By not going after the IRS, Sessions has essentially given the agency tacit approval of its left-wing weaponization, and it’s feared that if and when the Democrats recapture the White House and/or Congress that the department’s Gestapo-like tactics may only worsen against conservatives.
IRS employees “will now have the green light to target Americans for their political beliefs and mislead investigators without ever being accountable for their lawlessness,” declared Republican Congressman and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Kevin Brady. “The Department [of Justice’s] response blatantly ignores our most troubling finding: that Ms. Lerner intentionally misled federal investigators in a flagrant violation of the law. This is unacceptable, and Ms. Lerner must be held accountable,” stated Republican Congressman Peter Roskam of Illinois.
In all of these cases, there’s a growing fear that Sessions is part-and-parcel of the “swamp” President Trump committed himself to draining when he ran for office. On Fox News, commentator Josie Piper chimed in with this very sentiment, saying, “I’m utterly disappointed that our DOJ has decided not to prosecute Lois Lerner. I voted for this administration to drain the swamp and correct some of the lawlessness that has run rampant in the government for the last 8 years plus. This is not a good start.”
Some Washington insiders fault Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and a number of the career attorneys working under him who may have taken part in the laissez-faire atmosphere of the previous presidential administration. If this is the case, Sessions may need to order a review of the heretofore-mentioned cases to get all the facts, and lower-level attorneys found to be obstructing prosecutions need to be fired.
Other observers say that Rosenstein also needs to bear responsibility for the ever-expanding Russian collusion investigation of Special Counsel Mueller turning into a witch hunt. Writing in National Review, author Andrew McCarthy commented, “[DOJ] regulations do not permit the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel in order to determine whether there’s a basis for a criminal investigation. To the contrary, the basis for a criminal investigation must pre-exist the appointment. It’s the criminal investigation that triggers the special counsel, not the other way around. Rosenstein, instead, appointed a special counsel and unleashed him to sniff around and see if he could come up with a crime.”
It may be worthwhile to take a good, long look at Rosenstein to see if he really has the interests of Sessions (and President Trump) at heart.
In short, AG Sessions needs to crack the whip in his own department. If he can’t produce results, then he, like former FBI Director James Comey before him, may need to seek other employment.
~ American Liberty Report
