Jeff Sessions Won't Bail Out Roy Moore

Attorney general Jeff Sessions has told political allies in Alabama that he is not considering running for his old Senate seat as a write-in candidate in next month’s special election. That’s according to a spokeswoman for Sessions at the Department of Justice, Sarah Isgur Flores, who also tells me that Sessions is telling Alabama Republicans he is not considering being appointed to the seat if Roy Moore wins and is either not seated by or is expelled from the Senate.

The New York Times reported Monday that two White House officials independently discussed the idea of Alabama governor Kay Ivey blocking Moore so that she could “immediately appoint” Sessions to the vacant seat. The White House has not said whether it has discussed this with Sessions. “As a policy we don’t discuss White House communications,” Flores said.

Sessions resigned from the Senate in January after being confirmed as attorney general. Ivey’s predecessor, Governor Robert Bentley, appointed Luther Strange to the Sessions seat, but Strange lost the Republican primary for the special election to Moore.

Last week, Moore was accused by four different women of having pursued a sexual relationship when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers. One woman told the Washington Post that he had touched her sexually when she was 14. A fifth accuser emerged on Monday afternoon, claiming in a news conference that, around the same time as the other alleged incidents, Moore groped her when she was 16.

There has been some discussion of Strange, Sessions, or some other Alabama Republican running as a write-in candidate for the December 12 election, which could possibly split the GOP vote and give the seat to Democrat Doug Jones. Strange has not ruled out running as a write-in.