Trump is blasting Sessions for following his instructions to not investigate Hillary Clinton
President Donald Trump on Tuesday bashed Attorney General Jeff Sessions for failing to investigate Hillary Clinton — something he said he no longer wanted to do because his 2016 opponent had already “suffered greatly.”
“[Sessions] has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” Trump wrote in an early morning series of tweets. “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign — ‘quietly working to boost Clinton.’ So where is the investigation A.G.”
Trump repeatedly called for Clinton, his Democratic opponent, to be investigated during the 2016 campaign, at one point even telling her she would be “in jail” if he got elected president.
“I hate to say this, but if I win, I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception, there has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor,” Trump said during the first general election debate in October.
Clinton responded by saying that it’s “just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.”
“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump interjected.
Trump dropped his “lock her up” campaign call after winning the election, telling reporters that he would not recommend going after Clinton because she “suffered greatly in many different ways.”
“It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about,” Trump said.
He also said during a rally in March that “we don’t care” about prosecuting Clinton anymore.
But mired in the Russia scandal and struggling to get enact his legislative agenda, Trump has in recent days amped up his attacks on “Crooked Hillary,” on Saturday suggesting that she has ties to Russia and asking why she is not being investigated for her “crimes.”
Trump’s apparent reversal on investigating Clinton is part of a wave of attacks he’s been waging against Sessions, whom he’s been fuming at for recusing himself from matters relating to the Russia investigation.
“If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’” Trump told the New York Times last week. “It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”
Sessions has said that he plans to remain attorney general, but his job has — in recent days — appeared to be in serious jeopardy as Trump reportedly mulls replacing him with ally Rudy Giuliani.
During the campaign, Giuliani said Clinton was “prosecutable for so many offenses it’s mind-boggling” and called her “one of the biggest criminals to run for the White House.”
“When I see her, I see her in an orange jumpsuit, I’m sorry, or at least a striped one,” Giuliani said in October.
