The Wall Street Journal reports President Trump is reviewing at least five possible candidates to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, adding more fuel to the expectation the president finally will move from insulting his own AG to firing him after the midterms.
The potential candidates include Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Transportation Department general counsel Steven Bradbury, former Attorney General Bill Barr, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and Janice Rogers Brown, a retired appeals court judge from the District of Columbia Circuit, the people said.
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While Mr. Trump has spent more than a year undercutting his attorney general, he has rarely spoken about successors, according to White House officials and people familiar with his thinking.
His discussion of these candidates represents a shift, signaling for the first time that Mr. Trump is envisioning what his administration might look like without Mr. Sessions in the cabinet.
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Mr. Sessions isn’t currently planning to leave, but privately has said that he anticipates he may be asked to resign, according to people familiar with the matter. The attorney general, who was the first senator to endorse Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, has told people the request may come on the president’s Twitter feed.
The Senate would have to confirm whomever the president picks to replace Sessions.
Another purported candidate, Sessions chief of staff Matthew Whitaker, has allies in the White House but also detractors, according to people familiar with the matter. As a commentator on CNN, Mr. Whitaker expressed skepticism about the special counsel probe and urged limits on its scope, a position likely to raise objections from Democrats and some Republicans.
Appearing on CNN in July 2017 — before he was in his current position as Sessions’s chief of staff — Whitaker mused about a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with a temporary attorney general. Whitaker noted that federal regulations still gave the attorney general power over the budget for a special counsel. That temporary replacement, he then said, could move to choke off Mueller’s funding.
“So I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment,” Whitaker said, “and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”
It was the second time in the same interview that Whitaker brought up the defunding idea. He said Rosenstein could also be pressured to do it.
“I think what ultimately the president is going to start doing is putting pressure on Rod J. Rosenstein, who is in charge of this investigation, is acting attorney general, and really try to get Rod to maybe even cut the budget of Bob Mueller and do something a little more stage crafty than the blunt instrument of firing the attorney general and trying to replace him,” Whitaker said.
Trump, when asked about Whitaker Thursday morning, dodged giving a straight answer.
FOX NEWS’S STEVE DOOCY: In The Washington Post this morning, it says that you talked to the attorney general’s chief of staff about replacing the attorney general. Apparently, according to The Post, you talked to Matthew Whitaker, but the conversation was nebulous -- they depict it as. It wasn’t clear whether you wanted him to replace him on interim basis or he would be nominated on a more permanent basis. Anything to that story?
TRUMP: Well I never talk about it, but I can tell you Matt Whitaker is a great guy. I mean, I know Matt Whitaker, but I never talk about conversations that I had. But you know, The Washington Post gets it wrong a lot. That’s the only thing --
DOOCY: Yes, but the conversation is you are in active talks to replace the attorney general of the United States?
TRUMP: I’m not doing anything. I want to get the elections over with. We’ll see what happens.
That leaves, for now at least, the five individuals currently under discussion at the White House. Three of them—Messrs. Azar, Bradbury and Sullivan—are serving in Senate-confirmed positions. They would have to be reconfirmed to serve as attorney general, but may have an advantage from having already won Senate approval.
Full story: Trump Is Mulling Candidates Who Could Succeed Jeff Sessions (WSJ) *Note: All WSJ articles appear behind a paywall
Trump’s potential new attorney general once mused about a new attorney general defunding Mueller (WaPo)