President Trump, en route to North Carolina to see Hurricane Florence damage firsthand, reiterated his disappointment with Attorney General Jeff Sessions "for numerous reasons," adding "and you understand."
Reporters asked the president about Sessions in a follow-up to an interview he gave The Hill Tuesday in which he returned to attacking his own attorney general over his Russia investigation recusal and more.
“I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” Trump told Hill.TV in an extensive and freewheeling interview Tuesday from the Oval Office.
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“I’m not happy at the border, I’m not happy with numerous things, not just this,” he said.
Trump suggested he had a personal blind spot when it came to nominating Sessions as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
“I’m so sad over Jeff Sessions because he came to me. He was the first senator that endorsed me. And he wanted to be attorney general, and I didn’t see it,” he said.
“And then he went through the nominating process and he did very poorly. I mean, he was mixed up and confused, and people that worked with him for, you know, a long time in the Senate were not nice to him, but he was giving very confusing answers. Answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him.”
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In announcing his recusal, Sessions said that he had consulted with Justice Department officials over the decision and that he had not meant to mislead members of the Senate over the meetings.
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The president suggested Sessions's experience going through the nominating process in the Senate may have impacted his performance as attorney general.
“He gets in and probably because of the experience that he had going through the nominating when somebody asked him the first question about Hillary Clinton or something he said ‘I recuse myself, I recuse myself,’" Trump said.
“And now it turned out he didn’t have to recuse himself. Actually, the FBI reported shortly thereafter any reason for him to recuse himself. And it’s very sad what happened.”
The FBI in an early 2017 email to a Sessions aide, made public last December, concluded that Sessions did not need to reveal contacts with foreign government officials that were made in the course of his work as a senator.
“I recused myself not because of any asserted wrongdoing on my part during the campaign,” Sessions told the Senate Intelligence Committee last April. “But because a Department of Justice regulation, 28 CFR 45.2, required it.”
Trump stopped short of saying he was ready to fire Sessions.
“We’ll see what happens. A lot of people have asked me to do that. And I guess I study history, and I say I just want to leave things alone, but it was very unfair what he did,” he said, referring to the recusal decision.
“And my worst enemies, I mean, people that, you know, are on the other side of me in a lot of ways, including politically, have said that was a very unfair thing he did.”
He concluded: "We’ll see how it goes with Jeff. I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed."
The Hill has posted its full interview separated out by topic. The president spends a good amount of time discussing his take on various components of the Russia investigation.
He admits he has not read the documents he is insisting the DOJ and FBI declassify and claims he will expose the FBI as a "cancer in our country."
ON DECLASSIFYING DOCUMENTS AND THE RUSSIA PROBE
Buck Sexton: Have you reviewed the memos yourself? What do you expect them to show, if so?
President Trump: I have not reviewed them. I have been asked by many people in Congress as you know to release them. I have watched commentators that I respect begging the president of the United States to release them. We’re sitting with one right here, we’re sitting with two, you’re right. More than once. And I have had many people ask me to release them. Not that I didn’t like the idea, but I wanted to wait. I wanted to see what, you know, where it was all going. And I think this whole, it’s a hoax. You know Gregg Jarrett wrote a book called the Russian Hoax. It actually is a hoax. I call it a witch hunt, but it’s a hoax. Beyond a witch hunt.
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ON ADDRESSING CONCERNS ABOUT FBI/DOJ CONDUCT IN RUSSIA PROBE
President Trump: I think that I hope to be able to put this up as one of my crowning achievements that I was able to do through the help of a lot of good people including you two, and all of the support we have. We have tremendous support by the way, to expose something that is truly a cancer in our country. When you look at the FBI, you know you have eight people or so fired now.
And what we’ve done is a great service to the country, really. You know, I hope, I hope to be able to call this one of, along with tax cuts and regulations, and all of the things I’ve done. You know you’ve been seeing, you probably saw the news conference I just did.
More: READ: President Trump’s exclusive interview with Hill.TV (The Hill)
Hill.TV INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE: Trump eviscerates Sessions: ‘I don’t have an attorney general’ (The Hill)