The Russia Probe Wasn't the Only Time Trump Interfered With the Justice Department

[babylonsister]

The Russia Probe Wasn’t the Only Time Trump Interfered With the Justice Department
After pressure from the president, DOJ set its sights on Hillary Clinton.
Dan Friedman


Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, due for release on Thursday, is expected to detail President Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere with FBI investigations into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia. In particular, the report may discuss Trump’s attempt to convince former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to undo his decision to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia matter.

Sessions rebuffed Trump’s demand that he take control of the probe—a choice that ultimately paved the way for Mueller’s appointment and helped create a major rift between the president and his first attorney general. But as a lawsuit quietly winding its way through the courts makes clear, that wasn’t the end of the story.

Sessions’ initial recusal announcement was broad: He promised to avoid involvement in investigations into any matters relating to the 2016 presidential campaign. But as Mother Jones has reported, he repeatedly violated that pledge during his time in office. Indeed, after months of public badgering by Trump, Sessions complied with his boss’s demand that the Justice Department investigate Hillary Clinton. In November 2017, Sessions instructed the US attorney for Utah, John Huber, to look into several issues related to Trump’s 2016 opponent.

While it has been overshadowed by Trump’s fury at the Mueller probe, critics say Sessions’ instructions to Huber were an alarming example of Trump successfully pressuring the nation’s top law enforcement officer into launching an investigation of a political opponent.

“It looks a lot like an attorney general trying to curry favor with an out-of-control boss,” Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, a liberal government watchdog group, told Mother Jones. “The Department of Justice opened an undefined investigation of Hillary Clinton based on the political demands of Congress and the president, not the existence of new evidence.”

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/jeff-sessions-john-huber-russia-hillary-clinton/

[Kurt V.]

1. its like well no shit every day.