Giuliani downplays chances of Sessions firing

President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday downplayed the possibility Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be fired before the conclusion of the Russia investigation.

“There’s no doubt he has some grievances,” Giuliani said of Trump while speaking to reporters at the White House. “He’s not going to fire him before this is over.”

Seconds later, Giuliani refused to guarantee that Trump will not fire Sessions, conceding the president “goes back and forth on Jeff.” But the former New York City mayor said he is urging the president not to fire his attorney general.  

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“Well, I don’t think anybody in the Cabinet in any administration is ever secure. Something totally different can go wrong. But I don’t think the president is going to touch him, Mueller, or Rosenstein,” Giuliani said, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller and his supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 

Giuliani was at the White House for a Sports and Fitness Day event. 

Trump revived speculation about Sessions’s job security earlier Wednesday when he publicly wished he picked somebody else as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. 

Asked if the president plans to fire Sessions, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded that “the president has made his viewpoint very clearly known and I don’t have any personnel announcements at this point.”

The comments underscored Trump’s deep-seated anger at Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation due to his role as a top campaign surrogate in 2016.

Sessions’s recusal helped pave the way for the appointment of Mueller as special counsel leading the Russia probe, which has moved closer to Trump’s inner circle. 

Giuliani said Mueller should conclude the portion of the investigation into the president’s conduct in Russia-related matters before the end of the summer.  

“You have a big election coming up,” he said. “Even if they put together whatever the heck they have, interview or no interview, by Sept. 1 the public should have an explanation of what Mueller has. I would really like that because I don’t think they have much.” 

Giuliani said if Mueller does not “file his report by Sept. 1, mid-September, he’s clearly doing a Comey.”

The lawyer explained he was referring to former FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, which many Democrats blame for her loss to Trump. 

With regard to Sessions, Giuliani admitted the president has mixed feelings about the attorney general in part because while Sessions has executed Trump’s agenda on immigration, the president has never gotten over his recusal.

“I think in the long run, it will be worked out. It will be — I don’t think they’ll fire him,” Giuliani said of the two men. “They’re two good friends.”