Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Wednesday pushed back on President Trump’s tweet urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stop the federal Russia investigation, saying Sessions lacks the authority to end the special counsel probe.
“At this point, I don’t think the attorney general has any authority to do that,” Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters shortly after Trump fired off a series of tweets urging Sessions to “stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.”
Cornyn noted that Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation last year because he was involved in the Trump campaign as an adviser. That recusal led to Sessions’s deputy, Rod Rosenstein, to become the top Justice Department official overseeing the Russia probe and he appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel.
Trump has long criticized the special counsel investigation into ties between his campaign associates and Russia, and lashed out at the probe again on Wednesday as his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort appeared for the second day of his trial on bank and tax fraud charges in Virginia.
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning.
“Looking back on history, who was treated worse, Alfonse Capone, legendary mob boss, killer and ‘Public Enemy Number One,’ or Paul Manafort, political operative & Reagan/Dole darling, now serving solitary confinement – although convicted of nothing? Where is the Russian Collusion?” Trump added.
Cornyn told reporters that he “understands” Trump’s “frustration,” explaining that the president “feels like the media has missed a lot of what he considers to be the real collusion, that is between law enforcement agencies and people showing bias at the FBI and investigating people at the Trump campaign, and the focus has been all on him and his campaign where there’s no evidence of collusion.”
Still, Cornyn said that Sessions, a former GOP senator from Alabama, “really doesn’t have any power to stop the Manafort prosecution – it’s in court, the jury’s been selected, so it’s going forward.”
–– Molly Hooper
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