By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
Heading up a major law enforcement agency like the Justice Department or FBI is never easy. It’s a major headache. There’s always a crisis around the corner.
Keeping your job and doing it with integrity has only been more challenging under the Trump administration. Don’t count on Jeff Sessions sticking around as Attorney General for all too long, and expect Christopher Wray to face endless ethical dilemmas dealing with President Donald Trump after his confirmation as FBI director.
The president’s remarks to the New York Times give a pretty clear indication of tumultuous times ahead for the two.
Trump tells the paper that he would never have hired Sessions had he known he was going to recuse himself in the probe into Russia.
“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.
Everyone, perhaps except Trump, realizes Sessions had no choice considering he was in the the inner circle of the Trump campaign in 2016, and he met with Russian officials. It was a no-brainer for Sessions, and frankly, had he not, he would have been under great pressure on the Hill and from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to recuse himself.
Then there’s the comment about the FBI director.
“The FBI person really reports to the president of the United States,” Trump said in what clearly is an untrue statement. Sure, the FBI director can brief the president on a regular basis, but he doesn’t answer to the president, at least not in the way Trump thinks.
The FBI’s website states, “Within the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI is responsible to the attorney general, and it reports its findings to U.S. Attorneys across the country. The FBI’s intelligence activities are overseen by the Director of National Intelligence.”
Trump won’t have a very hard time pushing Sessions out. That seems to be a certainty.
But considering he’s already fired one FBI director, Trump will have a tough time firing a second one without catching hell from Congress and the American people.
These are challenging and complicated times for law enforcement.
What isn’t complicated is doing the right thing and not bending to pressures from the White House.
President Nixon tried undermining the justice system, and we know justice prevailed.
