Trump’s nonsensical bid for Sessions to ‘de-recuse’

When the person who hired you — and can fire you — says, “You should come in to work this Saturday,” what do you hear?

A suggestion?

A request?

An opinion?

Or an order?

According to the ethically-challenged lawyers and spokespeople who struggle to protect President Donald Trump from himself, it could be heard as any of the first three, but, heaven forbid, it certainly was not intended as an order.

Chances are most people would sigh and call off their Saturday plans. But Trump’s enablers claimed last week that a Tweet reaching millions of people was merely an expression of Trump’s opinion that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should remove special counsel Robert Mueller and close down the investigation into Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election.

Here’s the heart of the Tweet:

“This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further….”

The episode was yet another artifact of the near-zany but terrifying alternate universe called the Trump Administration. Someday, if we are very lucky as a nation, our progeny may read about these days with puzzlement and perhaps an occasional chuckle, but until Trump is no longer president, the almost-daily bizarrities that pass as governing should not go unanalyzed or unchallenged, lest they become, to democracy’s lasting detriment, the norm.

Because America’s core value is respect for the rule of law over the rule of man, the Attorney General is not the President’s lawyer but the people’s lawyer. The president can remove the AG for cause or by whim, but the president alone cannot appoint a successor; the Senate must confirm any nominee, who then takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, not the president.

Let’s count the ways that Tweet ignores reality.

1. Sessions properly recused himself from any part of the investigation because he had served as advisor and surrogate for the Trump campaign and had talked with a Russian official at least twice during the campaign. Since that campaign is at the heart of the investigation, Sessions had no choice under Justice Department ethics rules. In order to dismiss Mueller or limit the investigation as Trump insists, Sessions would have to “de-recuse” himself. But his reasons for recusal lie in the past, which cannot change, so “de-recusal” would be not only unprincipled but logically impossible. Does Trump actually not understand that little problem his “opinion” creates?

2. Trump has long maintained that Sessions’ recusal was a mistake. If Trump were to fire Sessions for refusing to violate his principles, he would be very close to obstructing justice, which, under federal law, means to endeavor “by any threatening letter or communication” to “influence, intimidate or impede” an officer of the court. One doesn’t have to succeed to commit obstruction; intent is enough.

3. Given our national reverence for the rule of law, does the Mueller investigation, as Trump complains, “stain our country,” or does it demonstrate the mettle of a vibrant republic? It is another example of Trump’s focus on himself as the center of the universe; if a stain exists, it’s on him.

4. Trump’s enablers, including a majority of Congress, at one moment advise us not to take those midnight mental ramblings literally and the next moment insist that they represent “official pronouncements” and “policy statements.” In the real world, it cannot be both ways.

How should Sessions interpret the presidential muscle job? Rethink his Saturday plans, or resign?