Trump interview

President Trump in an Oval Office interview with Hill.TV launched one of his most ferocious broadsides to date against Jeff Sessions.

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“I don’t have an Attorney General. It’s very sad,” Trump told Hill.TV

  The Hill

He still thinks the attorney general is a tool in his personal arsenal.

“I’m not happy at the border, I’m not happy with numerous things, not just this,” he said.

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“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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“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.”

It's pure bullshit that it turned out he didn't have to recuse himself. He may well be (and no doubt should be) at least a person of interest in the investigation himself for his part in the Trump campaign/transition group.

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.”

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Trump demurred on whether he might one day fire the attorney general.

“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.

"A lot of people" are those voices in his head again. And he absolutely does not study anything, much less history.

“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.”

No they didn't.

President Trump in an exclusive interview with Hill.TV said Tuesday he ordered the release of classified documents in the Russia collusion case to show the public the FBI probe started as a “hoax,” and that exposing it could become one of the “crowning achievements” of his presidency.

“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said.

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“I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done… in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said.

  The Hill

Keep saying that.

Trump also said he regretted not firing former FBI Director James Comey immediately instead of waiting until May 2017, confirming an account his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gave Hill.TV earlier in the day that Trump was dismayed in 2016 by the way Comey handled the Hillary Clinton email case and began discussing firing him well before he became president.

It's positively ludicrous to think that Trump was concerned Comey wasn't treating Hillary Clinton fairly. He was no doubt thrilled that Comey's last minute decision to announce he was reopening the case into Clinton's emails right before the election. Not to mention his interview with Lester Holt soon after firing Comey where he said it was because of "this Russia thing."

The president also called into question the FBI’s handling of the Russian investigation, again criticizing it for surveilling his campaign.

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“They know this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country because basically what they did is, they used Carter Page, who nobody even knew, who I feel very badly for, I think he’s been treated very badly. They used Carter Page as a foil in order to surveil a candidate for the presidency of the United States.”

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“One of the things I’m disappointed in is that the judges in FISA didn’t, don’t seem to have done anything about it. I’m very disappointed in that Now, I may be wrong because, maybe as we sit here and talk, maybe they’re well into it. We just don’t know that because I purposely have not chosen to get involved,” Trump said.

Hysterical.

“It’s a hoax, beyond a witch hunt,” he said.

Witch hunt can't be used any longer because so many people have been indicted and/or jailed. So now it's a hoax.

“Number one how illegal is it? And number two, how low is it,” he said.

“What we have now is an insurance policy,” the president said. “But it has been totally discredited, even Democrats agree that it has been discredited. They are not going to admit to it, but it has been totally discredited. I think, frankly, more so by text than by documents.”

Ask him to name one Democrat that thinks the investigation has been discredited. Just one.

Trump said he had not read the documents he ordered declassified but said he expected to show they would prove the FBI case started as a political “hoax.”

“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 where it was all going,” he said.

I don't doubt he didn't read them, but did Nunes? Because somebody chose which pages of which documents to release.

In the end, he said, his goal was to let the public decide by seeing the documents that have been kept secret for more than two years.

Somebody has convinced him that his main - or perhaps just the most immediate - danger is in impeachment, and he needs public support to avoid it.

“All I want to do is be transparent,” he said.

So, release your tax returns.