Trump, Sessions, and the whirlwind on the horizon

It would be hard to find a member of President Trump's cabinet who has executed his administration's policy more faithfully than Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Sessions embraced Trump's campaign early, when most Republican officeholders and most conservatives ran screaming from it. He went through a scathing confirmation process in which he was unfairly tarred as a racist based on vacuous claims that contradict his record. Since his swearing in, he has outspokenly voiced Trump's policy concerns about everything from illegal immigration and urban violent crime to civil forfeiture and narcotics trafficking.

So, it is a strange twist indeed that Sessions should now have been singled out for bullying in Trump's unending tweetstorm. Astonishingly, the administration is making no secret of Trump's desire to sack and replace Sessions.

Sessions' great error, as Trump sees it and spelled out in an interview in the New York Times, was his decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department's investigation of a campaign in which he was personally involved. The decision seemed obvious to us and others at the time he made it. If Loretta Lynch compromised her integrity by meeting secretly with Bill Clinton while investigating his wife, which she certainly did, Sessions could hardly run an investigation of a campaign that would delve into his own activities.

Yet, this act of simple common sense has brought Trump's wrath down upon his most loyal lieutenant. A man who has promoted both Trump himself and his policy with vigor is on the outs, and by Trump's own account, it seems to be simply because he refused to place himself between Trump and an investigation into the president's inner circle. In his confirmation hearings, Sessions made clear his role would be to enforce the law; he would not become an officer of the palace guard. Trump should therefore not be surprised at how Sessions has conducted himself.