White House: We Will Soon Decide on the Future of the Attorney General of the United States

Hours after the U.S. President criticized Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, the White House announced on Tuesday, July 25, that a decision regarding his future would be made soon. According to AFP, Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, responded to a question about the tension between Donald Trump and the Attorney General, stating that a decision would be made soon. Earlier on Tuesday, President Trump criticized Jeff Sessions, saying he had taken a 'very weak' stance on 'Hillary Clinton's crimes,' the Democratic candidate in last year's presidential election. Trump mentioned this on his Twitter account, referring to Clinton's use of a personal server, the hacking of Democratic Party emails, and the leaking of information. The President's tweet came after the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources, that Trump and his advisors had consulted about firing Jeff Sessions. Sessions, who was one of Trump's earliest supporters in the election campaign, stated that he loves his job and will continue as long as he deems it appropriate. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham described Trump's request for Sessions to investigate Hillary Clinton as 'very inappropriate.' According to Reuters, he tweeted that this request poses a threat to the separation of law and politics in the U.S., stating, 'Prosecutorial decisions should be based on facts and made legally, without political motivations.' The disagreements between the President and the Attorney General are not new. For instance, on July 19, Trump criticized Sessions in an interview with the New York Times, saying he should not have recused himself from the Russia investigation. Trump stated in part of this interview, 'Sessions should never have recused himself from this investigation. And if he was going to do that, he should have told me before I appointed him, and I would have picked someone else.' Sessions recused himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to the Russian government after it became known that he did not disclose his meeting with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador in Washington, during Trump's election campaign. He made this decision without consulting Trump and paved the way for the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller.