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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJeff Sessions's Grave Conflict of Interest - by Murray Waas
Last year, in March 2018, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions enlisted his subordinates to lie on his behalf that he did not know he was under federal investigation when he fired then Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabean investigation initiated by McCabe and overseen by him until it was taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
By doing so, Sessions and his allies succeeded in shutting down a major controversy. If it had been made public that the attorney general had knowingly fired the deputy FBI director (and later, acting director) whod opened and supervised that criminal investigation, the resulting scandal would have engulfed Sessions and would likely have even more seriously threatened his already tumultuous tenure as attorney general. Besides the scrutiny of the media and Congress, Sessions might have faced an inquiry by one of the Justice Departments internal watchdog agencies, the Departments Inspector General or Office of Professional Responsibility, as well as incurring the wrath of an already embittered president.
A government official with first-hand knowledge of the matter told me that the attorney general therefore instructed aides to make false statements in briefings to the press. The officials account of what was at stake for Sessions is corroborated in part by a mass of evidence in the Mueller Report detailing the special counsels investigation of the former attorney general.
In addition to firing McCabe, Sessions, while under investigation, played a leading role in more broadly carrying out President Trumps relentless campaign to undermine and discredit the FBI. Several leading experts on legal ethics have told me that Sessionss simultaneous and dual roles almost certainly violated the American Bar Associations Model Rules of Professional Conduct and federal government conflict of interest regulations. That demonstrates both the utility of Sessions misstatements, and the gravity of the situation he faced.
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much, much, much more:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/15/jeff-sessionss-grave-conflict-of-interest/
d_r
(6,907 posts)What is "something to dance on"
BSdetect
(8,998 posts)Now that should mean he was a hostile witness just as if he was on trial.