BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Mauricio Macri said he would propose an amnesty law for informal workers in a speech to Congress on Thursday, a sign his administration is scaling back a previously proposed labor reform that met fierce resistance from unions.

Argentina's President Mauricio Macri waves as he arrives for the opening session of the 136th legislative term at the Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

In the speech marking the opening of this year’s legislative session, Macri defended his business-friendly government’s so-called “gradualist” approach to economic reforms from critics who argue he should move faster to cut government spending and lower taxes in order to boost growth and attract investment.

“They ask us for a shock adjustment, and to them I say we came here to reduce poverty and make sure that no Argentine goes hungry,” Macri said. “That’s why we chose the path of ‘gradualist’ change.”

Since taking office in December 2015 after more than a decade of populist rule, Macri has reached a deal with creditors to allow Argentina to exit default, cut grains export taxes, and reduced utilities to lower the fiscal deficit to the government target of 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year.

Despite his “Let’s Change” coalition’s strong performance in last October’s legislative elections, it still lacks a majority, and reforms Macri has proposed since then have generated vocal opposition. A reform to the country’s pension system passed last December only after violent clashes outside Congress.

Macri had also promised more immediate and drastic changes to the country’s labor laws, widely seen as among the most costly to companies in Latin America. Certain elements of that proposal, such as lower corporate penalties for firing workers, prompted an outcry from powerful labor unions.

His focus on Thursday on just one element of the proposal, the labor amnesty, was indicative of the piecemeal approach the government now plans. One-third of workers in Argentina are off-the-books, Macri said, and the law would allow them to formally register without losing seniority or benefits.

He also called on the Senate to pass a reform to the country’s capital markets law that had previously been passed by the lower house.

Macri suggested Congress debate the legalization of abortion, a divisive issue in the heavily Roman Catholic country, even though he is personally opposed.

“I am in favor of life, but I also support mature debates,” he said.</s>Sessions and Franken go at it again</s>(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump renewed his verbal attacks on his attorney general Wednesday, describing as “disgraceful” his handling of Republican complaints that the FBI abused its surveillance power during the early stages of the Russia investigation.

Jeff Sessions, who rarely responds publicly to criticism from his boss, didn’t keep quiet this time and said the Justice Department he leads had acted appropriately.

“As long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution,” Sessions said.

The department’s internal watchdog will evaluate whether prosecutors and agents wrongly obtained a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor the communications of a onetime Trump campaign associate, Session announced Tuesday. The inspector general’s review comes in response pressure from congressional Republicans who, like Trump, have fumed about what they believe to be bias within the FBI.

But that step apparently did not enough to satisfy Trump, who has spent the past year berating the former Alabama senator who was the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump’s White House candidacy.

“Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!”

Trump is angry that Sessions referred the allegations of Justice Department employee misconduct to the inspector general, but that’s exactly what that office is charged with doing. Its lawyers are part of the department and, contrary to Trump’s claims, can and often do refer matters for prosecution.

The office has been working on a separate review of the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation under former Director James Comey, but that report is not late and is expected to be released around March or April.

It was the latest of Trump’s verbal volleys aimed at Sessions, who continues to faithfully execute Trump’s agenda. A day earlier, for example, Sessions said his department was working toward banning rapid-fire “bump stock” devices at Trump’s urging, even though the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had previously said it was powerless to do so without action from Congress.

Sessions until now has been largely silent in the face of Trump’s taunts. Critics say that strains department morale and makes Sessions seem eager to appease the president, at the risk of dangerously politicizing the department. A spokeswoman declined to comment Wednesday.

The two bonded early in Trump’s campaign over their shared priorities of fighting urban crime and illegal immigration.

But their relationship was strained by Sessions’ decision to step aside from the Russia investigation after facing questions about his own contacts during the 2016 campaign with Moscow’s ambassador to the United States. Trump blames that move for the eventual appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the sprawling investigation. Sessions has become a scapegoat for Trump’s anger. Trump has refrained from directly challenging the special counsel.

The criticism was so harsh that Sessions offered last year to resign; Trump refused. Trump has since been relentlessly pressuring Sessions to investigate political rivals.

Trump and Republicans also have encouraged Sessions to look further into the surveillance abuse allegations. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested Tuesday that Trump would be pleased with Sessions’ referral to the inspector general.

“It’s something that he’s clearly had frustration over so I would imagine he certainly support the decision to look into what we feel to be some wrongdoing,” she said. “I think that’s the role of the Department of Justice and we’re glad that they’re fulfilling that job.”</s>BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina’s president says Congress should launch a debate on legalizing abortion.

President Mauricio Macri told lawmakers Thursday that he is against abortion, but favours “mature, responsible debates.” He said that his government believes that Congress should include the issue in its 2018 agenda.

Macri spoke during his annual state of the nation speech to Congress.

Abortion is only allowed in Argentina in cases of rape and health risks to the woman.

Thousands of people recently gathered at a demonstration by pro-abortion activists in front of the Congress building in Buenos Aires to demand free and safe abortions.

Opposition party lawmakers say they will soon present a bill to legalize abortions in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.</s>We now live in a world where the attorney general going out to dinner with two top Justice Department officials is not only news, but a sign that he’s rebelling against the president. As a senator, Jeff Sessions was one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, and he served as one of his campaign’s top foreign-policy advisers. But the seeds of the attorney general’s rift with the president were planted during his confirmation hearing, when he offered up some thoughts about Russia collusion that turned out to be not entirely accurate. Here’s how the Trump-Sessions relationship devolved to the point that two 71-year-old lawmakers are barely speaking, lobbing insults on Twitter, and sending passive-aggressive messages with their choice of dinner companion.

Exactly one year ago, President Trump was basking in the unusually positive reviews from his first address to Congress. The very next day, we learned that Sessions met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least twice while working with the Trump campaign — yet during his confirmation hearing he denied, under oath, having any such contacts.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions said of Trump officials’ Russia contacts, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Amid calls for him to step down, at least from the FBI’s Russia investigation, Sessions said he would “recuse myself on anything that I should recuse myself on, that’s all I can tell you.”

The White House stuck by Sessions, claiming then-Democratic Senator Al Franken pushed the story to distract from Trump’s good press. Trump himself told reporters he had “total” confidence in Sessions and did not think he should recuse himself.

The next day Sessions announced he would recuse himself from any investigation into the 2016 campaign. “So in the end I have followed the right procedure,” he said, “… just as I believe any good attorney general should do.”

Over the next 48 hours, he lashed out at various Democrats, baselessly accusing President Obama of wiretapping him during the campaign. Many months later, the New York Times reported that Trump instructed White House counsel Don McGahn to keep Sessions from recusing himself, and when he failed Trump attacked his staff:

The Times also reported that despite his recusal, Sessions worked to spread negative information about FBI Director James Comey after he refused to publicly confirm that Trump wasn’t under investigation.

Trump Fires Comey, Ostensibly Because Sessions Told Him To

In the statement announcing Comey’s firing on May 9, 2017, the White House said, “President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.” The administration released a letter from Rosenstein arguing that Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe was inappropriate, and a one-paragraph letter from Sessions saying that he agreed. Later Trump said he’d decided to fire the FBI director regardless of what Rosenstein and Sessions said, referencing the Russia probe.

If Trump was firing Comey to curtail the Russia investigation, it backfired spectacularly. Rosenstein, who is in charge of any campaign-related matters thanks to Sessions’s recusal, appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel on May 17, 2017, to look into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,’’ as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” Mueller was “authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.”

Shortly after Mueller’s appointment, Trump berated Sessions during an Oval Office meeting, pointing to his recusal as the moment the administration lost control of the Russia probe, according to the Times. Sessions offered to resign, but Trump decided to keep him on after being persuaded that firing him would create a bigger mess:

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus says he prevented Sessions from resigning on two occasions. Priebus said he learned the AG planned to step down just after the incident in the Oval Office, and he ran to catch up with Sessions before he left.

“I knocked on the door of the car, and Jeff was sitting there and I just jumped in and shut the door,” Priebus said. “And I said, ‘Jeff, what’s going on?’ And then he told me that he was going to resign. I said, ‘You cannot resign. It’s not possible. We are going to talk about this right now.’ So I dragged him back up to my office from the car.”

A White House insider said that Trump told Priebus to obtain Sessions’s resignation in June as well, but he talked him out of it, telling him, “If I get this resignation, you are in for a spiral of calamity that makes Comey look like a picnic.’”

In his first public attack on Sessions, Trump told the New York Times on July 19, 2017, that he wouldn’t have nominated Sessions if he knew he was going to recuse himself.

Trump Tries to Humiliate Sessions into Resigning

Trump doesn’t love firing people when he’s not on a TV set, and at the end of July he lobbed a number of public insults at his attorney general that were widely viewed as attempts to force him to resign. Reports suggested Trump was considering Rudy Giuliani or Senator Ted Cruz as Sessions’s replacement, but both men shot down the idea. Axios reported that he had called a political associate and asked, “What would happen if I fired Sessions?”

The Washington Post reported that Trump had been musing about using a recess appointment to install a new attorney general without the approval of Congress once Sessions was gone.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump wouldn’t say whether he planned to fire Sessions, and dismissed his early campaign endorsement. “It’s not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement,” Trump said. “I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions.”

He also continued lashing out at Sessions on Twitter:

Sessions said he intended to stay on “as long as that is appropriate.”

Though Sessions had little to do with it, having his old Alabama Senate seat go to a Democrat probably didn’t improve his relationship with Trump. The president initially backed establishment candidate Luther Strange, who had been appointed to replace the AG, but the GOP nomination went to Roy Moore. Trump stuck by Moore even after he was accused of sexually assaulting several teen girls, but Sessions contradicted the official line, saying “I have no reason to doubt these young women.” Democrat Doug Jones wound up winning the December special election.

Following Trump’s public complaints about FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, Sessions reportedly pressured FBI director Christopher Wray to fire him in December. Wray refused and threatened to quit if Sessions didn’t back off, according to Axios, and McGahn told him it wasn’t worth losing another FBI director.

After laying off Sessions for a few months, on February 21, 2018, Trump resumed his public shaming of the AG, criticizing him for failing to prosecute Obama for failing to stop the Russian election meddling Trump officials are accused of participating in. Also, in the initial version of the tweet, Trump called him Jeff “Session.”

Trump Lashes Out at Sessions for Following DOJ Rules

Showing once again that he does not understand how the Justice Department works, Trump was angered by Sessions asking the Justice Department’s inspector general to review Republican claims that Trump campaign officials were improperly surveilled, instead of ordering an investigation. As the Times notes, “an attorney general cannot order an inspector general to investigate anything, only refer information.”

Rather than silently accepting Trump’s insults as he has so many times in the past, on Wednesday Sessions responded to the president’s “disgraceful” tweet with a statement explaining his actions.

In case it was not clear that Sessions was siding with the law rather than the president, on Wednesday night he made sure he was spotted dining with Rod Rosenstein and the Solicitor General Noel Francisco — who happen to be the next two people in line to run the Justice Department.

A source close to Sessions told Axios that Francisco had requested the meeting some time ago, and it was “in no way planned as pushback or an act of solidarity against the president.”

In addition to revealing that Trump has given Sessions the derisive nickname “Mr. Magoo,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Mueller is investigating whether Trump’s efforts to drive Sessions out of his job were part of an effort to obstruct the Russia probe. So now Trump’s anger at Sessions for indirectly starting the Mueller investigation is also fodder for the Mueller investigation.</s>After heated debate about his character, record, and closeness to the president, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was confirmed Feb. 8 to be the attorney general of the United States. The former junior senator from Alabama, 70, served in the Senate for 20 years. He follows the first two African-Americans to serve as U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Here's what you need to know about Jeff Sessions:

Sessions was born in Selma, Alabama, site of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery that was led by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965. Sessions grew up in the nearby town of Hybart, a small, quiet place that had "about 10 homes" in the '50s and '60s, according to NPR. His parents owned a country store, and Sessions stocked shelves as a boy. He describes his upbringing as "almost idyllic." (Hybart now has a single resident.) He attended segregated schools through the 12th grade.

He went to college in Montgomery, Alabama, received his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law, and practiced law in Mobile, Alabama, before turning to politics. He also served in the Army and the Army Reserves. Popular as a senator, he ran unopposed in the 2014 election.

2. He was the first sitting U.S. senator to support Trump.

While most politicians were keeping their distance from the presidential candidate, Sessions enthusiastically put on a Make America Great Again hat and endorsed Trump at a rally in Alabama in February 2016. "The establishment has not had a conversion experience like I have," he told Bloomberg Businessweek last July. The endorsement surprised many, but Sessions turned out to be right about one thing: "Trump is where the Republicans are," he said in May, "and if you're going to be a Republican leader you should be supportive of that."

Sessions figured out early that Trump was a candidate who was reaching lower-income voters. "You cannot be president of the United States if people below $50,000 don't think you care about them and you have no real communication that motivates them to vote for you," Sessions said. "And that's the trend we've been on, and Trump has broken that."

3. Before he became a Trump loyalist, he did not have much influence in the Senate.

Because of his ultra-conservative views, Sessions was seen as a fringe figure before aligning with Trump. He "often toiled in obscurity," wrote Politico. The Bloomberg piece called Sessions a "gadfly" who turned into a "major player" by association and pointed to his "lack of a major committee chairmanship" to illustrate his lack of clout. (See a list of Sessions's committee assignments here.)

4. He has never been able to shake racist statements he made in the past.

In 1986, while Sessions was serving as the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Alabama, President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be a U.S. District Court judge. During confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four different lawyers who had worked with Sessions in the past testified about Sessions making racist comments. They said he had described the Ku Klux Klan as "OK until I found out they smoked pot"; that a white lawyer who had black clients was "a disgrace to his race"; that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was "un-American" and "forced civil rights down the throats of people"; and that the Voting Rights Act — hugely important in the fight for civil rights — was a "piece of intrusive legislation." A black prosecutor said that Sessions had called him "boy" and told him to "be careful what you say to white folks," which Sessions denied (he did not deny making the other statements).

Sessions's nomination was rejected — an extremely rare occurrence. He has had to assert repeatedly since then that he is not a racist, supporting his claim by saying, according to Sarah Wildman in The New Republic, that "his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times."



5. He prosecuted black civil rights workers during his time as U.S. attorney.

One of Sessions's most notorious cases was against the activists Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn Turner, and Spencer Hogue, who worked to give African Americans more political control after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Sessions brought so many charges against them that they were facing 100 years in prison. "They called them voter fraud cases, and we called them voter persecution cases," said Hank Sanders, a defense lawyer for the activists. A jury found them not guilty on all counts.

As the New York Times points out, "As attorney general, Mr. Sessions would be responsible for upholding civil rights laws," but Sessions has received consistent F scores from the NAACP on its legislative scorecard. He was called "a leading voice for the Old South and the conservative white backlash vote" in The Nation.

The NAACP staged a sit-in protest at Sessions's Mobile, Alabama, office Jan. 3 demanding that he withdraw from consideration as attorney general. The protesters sat for over seven hours before being arrested for trespassing. The NAACP's national president, Cornell William Brooks, told the New York Times, "If we understand depth of commitment to be a requirement for the job of attorney general, then he is not qualified for the job, because he has demonstrated no depth of commitment when it comes to civil rights." Bernard Simelton, the president of the Alabama NAACP State Conference, said that Sessions had sent the group "a pizza and a Pepsi."

In 2016, Sessions reflected on Politico's Off Message podcast about racial discrimination and his own record. "There was discrimination that impacted adversely the ability of the African American community to progress. People were in denial about that fact. I began to realize it. I don't feel like I did anything to damage the advancement of racial reconciliation and civil rights, but I wasn't any hero in it either."



He supported Trump when he claimed that voter fraud was the only way that Hillary Clinton could win in Pennsylvania. "Well, there's cheating in every election," Sessions said. One researcher found only 31 instances of possible voter fraud out of 1 billion votes cast in the United States. According to Zachary Roth in his book The Great Suppression, "studies have found that people are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter impersonation fraud."

Sessions has been aggressively anti-immigration throughout his political career; he has rejected amnesty bills, calling amnesty "terrorist assistance," and he wants to reduce legal immigration as well. In 2005, according to USA Today, he tried to build support around a 2,000-mile border fence that would cost $4 to $8 billion but it didn't get off the ground. He next supported President George W. Bush's Secure Fence Act. He has been praised as a "true immigration reformer" by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which has strong white supremacist ties, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sessions helped Trump come up with his immigration plan; in giving Sessions and his aide Stephen Miller the no. 2 spot on its Politico 50, the magazine wrote, "Trump is running on ideas that Sessions has been pushing for years."

Trump "had a strong view that we were going to end the lawlessness at the border, we would use a wall, and then he laid out other principles of immigration, many of which were consistent with what I have said," Sessions said on Politico's Off Message podcast. 



In 2015, Sessions crafted a memo called the "Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority." He relied on logical fallacy to provoke opposition to immigration reform. He wrote, "The last four decades have witnessed the following: a period of record, uncontrolled immigration to the United States; a dramatic rise in the number of persons receiving welfare; and a steep erosion in middle class wages."

"The people are determined to take their country back," he said in a speech at an NRA forum this year. "It's our country." When asked about the term "nativist," he told Roll Call, "What's wrong with that? … What's wrong with putting America first?"

"They suggest that somehow it’s irrational to love your country and that you should be grownups now and be a part of the world, get over this nativism," Sessions, who is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, told Bloomberg. "My belief is that the nation-state remains the one entity that can function, the one entity that can demand sacrifice from its constituents in the national interest."

8. He is pro-life and opposes same-sex marriage.

According to his website, Sessions "believes that sanctity of life begins at conception" and that "a marriage is union between a man and a woman." Sessions has a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opposes his confirmation because of "his alignment with organizations that oppose access to legal abortion services" and "his record of support for legislation criminalizing physicians."

9. He said Trump's "grab them by the pussy" comments were not sexual assault before saying that his comments were mischaracterized.

Sessions told the Weekly Standard that Trump had used "very improper language" but that "I don't characterize that as sexual assault. I think that's a stretch." He had to scramble after his comments got heat.

"The Weekly Standard's characterization of comments I made following Sunday's Presidential debate is completely inaccurate," Sessions told Mic. "My hesitation was based solely on confusion of the contents of the 2005 tape and the hypothetical posed by the reporter, which was asked in a chaotic post-debate environment. I regret that it resulted in an inaccurate article that misrepresented my views. Of course it is crystal clear that assault is unacceptable. I would never intentionally suggest otherwise."



10. He does not have a record of supporting environmental issues.

Sessions calls himself a "strong environmentalist" but has a lifetime score of 7 percent of voting for pro-environmental causes from the liberal pro-environment group the League of Conservation Voters. One of his largest contributors is Drummond Company, an Alabama-based coal producer. He is a supporter of the Keystone Pipeline and fracking as well as other forms of "energy exploration."

11. He is beloved by the NRA.

"I try to be worthy of the confidence that you've given me," he said in the NRA forum speech. Sessions was endorsed by the NRA in 2014 and has been given an "A" rating by the group. He opposes universal background checks.

12. He is known as a budget hawk.

Sessions supports caps on spending and has long been a champion of cutting spending in Washington. He voted against the bank bailout in 2008 and the stimulus bill in 2009. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has debated him on spending, pointing out that Sessions voted in favor of going to war in Iraq, which amounted to trillions of dollars in spending. "You guys are the big spenders," Sanders said.

13. He faced criticism over his answers to his Senate confirmation questionnaire.

Three former Justice Department civil rights lawyers wrote in the Washington Post that Sessions "had no substantive involvement" in any of the four civil rights cases that he listed as being among the most significant cases that he worked on during his time as U.S. attorney. Progressive advocacy groups found that Sessions had withheld "decades' worth of records" from his questionnaire, according to the Huffington Post. (As a former member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions has excoriated other judicial nominees for not filling out their forms completely.)

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey testified against Sessions, the first time a sitting senator has testified against another sitting senator during a Cabinet confirmation hearing, according to CNN. "The immense powers of the attorney general combined with the deeply troubling views of this nominee is a call to conscience," Booker said.

Rep. John Lewis of Georgia also testified against Sessions, powerfully invoking the history of racial injustice in the United States. "There are forces that want to take us back to another place. We don't want to go back. We want to go forward," he said. "It doesn't matter how Senator Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you. We need someone who's going to stand up, speak up, and speak out for the people that need help, for the people who have been discriminated against."



In a highly unusual move, the ACLU's national legal director David Cole testified at the hearing as well. The ACLU has been critical of Sessions, and said in a statement, "The ACLU is nonpartisan, and as a matter of longstanding policy does not support or oppose nominees for federal office. As a result, the ACLU rarely testifies in confirmation hearings. However, the organization is taking the extraordinary step of testifying in this hearing because Sen. Sessions' record raises significant, serious questions about his hostility to civil rights and civil liberties."

Sessions's hearing was interrupted multiple times by protesters Monday. Some of the protesters included men in KKK costumes. They yelled, "You can't arrest me, I am white!"

15. He was in contact with the Russian ambassador prior to the election, something he did not disclose during his confirmation hearing.

Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn wasn't the only one in contact with Russia's ambassador to the United States prior to Election Day. According to The Washington Post, then Sen. Sessions spoke with Sergey I. Kislyak twice last year, including a private meeting from Sessions' office "at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race."

Sessions disclosed neither of his discussions with Kislyak during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general, despite explicitly being asked about his contacts and potential ties to Russia. When asked by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, during his Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in January what he would do if he found evidence that someone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with the Russian government, he responded, "I’m not aware of any of those activities ... I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.” He also explicitly said "no" when asked if he had been in contact with the Russian government about the 2016 election.

Since The Washington Post broke the news of Sessions's conversations with Russia, a spokesperson for the attorney general said that his answers were not "misleading" but that he'd simply found his contacts with the ambassador to be irrelevant. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Senator, D-New York, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, are among the Democrats who have called for Sessions to resign.

“When Senator Sessions testified under oath that ‘I did not have communications with the Russians,’ his statement was demonstrably false, yet he let it stand for weeks — and he continued to let it stand even as he watched the President tell the entire nation he didn’t know anything about anyone advising his campaign talking to the Russians," Cummings said in a statement, according to The Hill.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts took to Twitter to call for Sessions's resignation, as well.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham also came forward to voice his support for a special prosecutor to look into Sessions' communications with Russia.



“There may be nothing there,” he said during a CNN town hall. “But if there is something there, that the FBI believes is criminal in nature, then for sure you need a special prosecutor... If there were contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, they may be legitimate; they may be OK. I want to know what happened between the Trump campaign, the Clinton campaign and the Russians."

Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, also said Sessions should recuse himself from overseeing an investigation of any contacts between Trump's campaign and the Russian government.

Sessions recused himself the day after the news broke, saying, “They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation. I have studied the rules and considered their comments and evaluation. I believe those recommendations are right and just.”

On May 24, 2017, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice revealed that Sessions hadn't disclosed these same meetings with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance. These requirements, via CNN, include him listing any contact he or his family members had had with foreign governments or their representatives.

A spokesman for Sessions responded that the then-Senator had been instructed not to list meetings like the ones he'd had with Kislyak on his clearance application:

On May 31, 2017, CNN reported that congressional investigators were looking into whether Sessions also met with Kislyak on April 26, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., where Trump was giving his first major foreign policy address.

Sessions joins Jared Kushner, an advisor to the president and Ivanka Trump's husband, and ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn as members of the Trump administration whose initial security clearance applications misrepresented their contacts with foreign officials.

Sessions will testify publicly in front of the Senate intelligence committee on July 13, 2017.

On May 9, 2017, Sessions wrote a letter recommending that Trump dismiss Comey, writing, "Based on my evaluation, and for the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General in the attached memorandum, I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI." In the memorandum by Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, Rosenstein recommends Comey’s dismissal, pointing to Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as a reason.



However, during his confirmation hearing, Sessions had previously testified that he would recuse himself from any investigations related to Clinton, according to the Los Angeles Times. During the campaign, Sessions had commented on the email server, as well as the Clinton Foundation, which he believed could place his objectivity into question.

Prior to his dismissal, Comey was investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Sessions had also recused himself from involvement in the Russia investigations due to his connections with Moscow's U.S. envoy during the 2016 campaign, according to The Hill.

17. He reportedly offered to resign from his position.

In the days leading up to Trump's first foreign trip this May, Sessions offered to resign from his position, saying he needs "the freedom to do his job," according to the New York Times.

Trump turned down the offer, though it's been reported that Trump has grown unhappy with Sessions, venting about his decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department's Russia-related investigations, the New York Times reports.

Trump also took to Twitter to blame the Justice Department for its defense of the travel ban:

18. He wouldn't have been hired by President Trump, had the president known Sessions would recuse himself.

On July 19, 2017, the New York Times published excerpts of conversations with President Trump. Some of the president's comments were directed toward Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused him early on from the Justice Department's Russian interference investigation:

The president also brought up Sessions's responses during his Senate confirmation hearings, sharing:

Despite speculation that Sessions would resign in the wake of these comments, the attorney general said at a press conference that he plans to stay in his role.

In a tweet on July 24, 2017, Trump referred to Sessions as "our beleaguered A.G."

In a news conference the next day, Trump ripped into him again, saying he was "very disappointed" in Sessions. As for Sessions' fate? "We will see what happens," Trump said. "Time will tell, time will tell."

According to the Washington Post, FBI special counselor Robert Mueller is reporting questioning witnesses about Trump's comments during that time to determine if Trump's seeming desire to get rid of Sessions were part of "a months-long pattern of attempted obstruction of justice."

On February 28, 2018, the Washington Post reported that Trump calls Sessions "Mr. Magoo" behind his back, a reference to a elderly bumbling cartoon character with poor eyesight. That same day Trump lashed out at Sessions on Twitter again, this time for having the inspector general look into alleged surveillances abuses.

Sessions issued the following statement: “We have initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary. As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.”

This article was originally published in November 2016 and has been updated.</s>President Trump’s latest outburst against Attorney General Jeff Sessions – escalating a year-long public flogging of the mild-mannered former senator – is raising the question: How much longer will Sessions endure?

Trump tore into his top law enforcement official on Tuesday over his decision to ask the inspector general to review alleged surveillance abuse by intelligence agencies. Trump complained that the IG is an “Obama guy” and such an investigation will “take forever” (though the inspector general has served under presidents of both parties).

"Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!" Trump tweeted.

Sessions typically does not respond to the president's periodic swipes -- but this one drew a rare, if measured, retort.

"We have initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary," he said in a statement. "As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution."

Those who know Sessions sounded off Wednesday about his predicament. Alabama Sen. Richard Selby, Sessions’ former colleague, pointedly said he wouldn’t stay if he were in Sessions’ shoes.

"I wouldn't be anybody's whipping boy,” he said on Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto.” “I wouldn't be belittled because the president is saying you don’t have any confidence in me."

"He's going through a lot. He has a lot of challenges," he said.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey backed Sessions’ decision to ask the IG to investigate FISA abuse, calling the move “precisely the right choice.”

“If anyone at DOJ should look into the circumstances of this FISA application, it is the IG, who reports to both the Attorney General and Congress,” he said in a statement.

Trump’s attack was the latest in a long line of public swipes at the AG, who was one of Trump’s earliest supporters and is otherwise aligned with Trump's base on issues like immigration and crime.

But their relationship soured within months of Trump taking office, largely over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia meddling investigation.

According to one published account, Sessions tried to resign last May after Trump called him an "idiot," but then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus intervened and helped convince him to stay.

The jabs have continued since then. Last week, Trump told Twitter followers to "ask Jeff Sessions" about why the Obama administration was not under investigation for its failure to stop Russian interference.

TRUMP SLAMS SESSIONS FOR USING 'OBAMA GUY' TO INVESTIGATE 'MASSIVE FISA ABUSE'

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Trump now refers to Sessions as “Mr. Magoo” -- the bumbling elderly cartoon character.

His staff marked the anniversary of his confirmation by buying him a bulletproof vest with his name of it as a gift, the Post reports. There is no indication right now that Sessions plans to step down, and Axios reports that Sessions dined Wednesday at a high-end D.C. restaurant with deputy Rod Rosenstein and Solicitor General Noel Francisco in what it described as a show of solidarity.

However, the outlet also described Sessions’ allies as “deeply concerned” by the latest feud, noting that it feels "different" from previous displays.

If the attorney general chooses to stay, it would seem unlikely Trump would look to fire him outright, especially given the chaos that followed the ouster of FBI boss James Comey.

Doing so could fire up the already-piqued interest of FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who the Post reports is already investigating a period last summer where Trump tried to push Sessions out, amid concerns Trump was looking to replace him with someone who would exercise control over the Russia probe.</s>Washington (CNN) The walk down Pennsylvania Avenue was short, but the image was a show of force.

The top three officials at the Justice Department strolled to dinner together Wednesday evening with smiles less than eight hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched his first public rebuttal to President Donald Trump's latest fusillade on Sessions' "disgraceful" handling of Republican allegations of surveillance abuses at the department and FBI.

The images of Justice Department solidarity ricocheted through Washington, not so much because the three officials chose to dine publicly, but that they did so on a night that proved to be a turning point.

Behind the scenes earlier Wednesday morning, senior Justice officials were keenly aware that any response from Sessions could be viewed as a brushback to the President, as a source close to Sessions explained it, and crafted a statement with the intent of not going an inch further than necessary to defend the department. A second source inside the building said the President's tweet, which landed at 9:34 am, was greeted with some measure of disbelief.

Sessions was prepared to accept the consequences, but the purpose wasn't to pick a fight, the source said -- "he's still loyal to the President."

By Wednesday afternoon, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, a friend of Sessions, was on Fox News addressing the attorney general's fractured relationship with Trump and suggesting the tweet missed the mark.

"The President is wrong," said Mukasey. "And he doesn't know his own interests."

Sessions still at it

More than 24 hours later, the attorney general still has his job. In fact, Sessions went back to business as usual Thursday, speaking at a summit at the White House aimed at highlighting the Trump administration's efforts to combat the opioid crisis. The President later briefly acknowledged Sessions, seated in the front row, during his own remarks at the event, noting their conversation about potential lawsuits against drug manufacturers. But the two men were not seen directly interacting at the event.

Trump privately fumed Wednesday after Sessions released his statement vowing to carry out his duties with "integrity" and invoking the Constitution; a source familiar with the President's demeanor described Trump as indignant.

When asked Thursday if Trump wants to fire Sessions, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders demurred: "Not that I know of."

But others who surround the President readily acknowledged how broken their relationship is at this point. Those familiar with Trump's thinking say he has never privately backed off his criticism of his attorney general and were prepared for it to resurface. The President at times had rolled his eyes when Sessions appeared on screen or largely ignored him when the two were in the same meeting. Trump also often grumbles about Sessions to his friends and allies, leaving those he's speaking with wondering why he doesn't just fire him.

Yet any realistic hope of getting another attorney general confirmed by the Senate appears dim, as two key senators on the Judiciary Committee voiced support for Sessions Thursday.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who recently feuded with Sessions over criminal justice reform issues, told reporters he has confidence in the attorney general and that he should be allowed to do his job. And Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham said he thinks Sessions is doing "a fine job."

"But, if you want to blow up the Senate, try to find an attorney general to replace Jeff Sessions under these circumstances," Graham quipped.

Some Justice Department veterans say Sessions ultimately made the right call.

"It's kinda like baseball. The President threw a pitch at Jeff Sessions' head and he was able to duck before it hit him," said Jamil Jaffer, founder of the National Security Institute and former associate White House counsel under President George W. Bush.

"The attorney general then would have been well within his rights -- at least as far as baseball etiquette goes -- to throw back at the President's head, but instead he decided to throw a hard inside fastball, just enough to brush him back off the plate, but not enough to start a beanball war," Jaffer said.

But Sessions' attempt to strike the right tone in defending his department and his own response to allegations of the FBI's surveillance abuses in the Russia investigation came as no comfort to the President.

While Trump and Sessions' irreconcilable differences have bubbled to the surface periodically since Sessions stepped aside from overseeing the Russia investigation less than a month into his tenure as attorney general last March, a détente of sorts had appeared to set over the past several months.

At an event in January, for example, Trump convened a meeting on prison reform at the White House. During the meeting, according to a source, the President turned to Sessions about three times for input and asked him to wrap up the meeting. Once it was over, however, they didn't linger.</s>President Trump kicked a gift horse in the mouth when he called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “Mr. Magoo,” comparing the country’s top law enforcement officer to a bumbling, visually impaired old man.

 Sessions may be blinkered in his ideology and hold some old-school ideas, but he’s pulled Trump’s cart a long way. Sessions has been deft at advancing conservative social and criminal policies that the White House loves — providing the basis to rescind DACA, slicing away at LGBT nondiscrimination protections, targeting drug dealers, and prosecuting gangs. All the while, in court, he’s defended Trump’s hastily conceived orders and tweets. Trump’s adversaries on the left have recoiled at Sessions’ aggressiveness. When Trump was publicly shaming Sessions as “beleaguered” and “WEAK” last summer, Vanita Gupta, who ran the department’s Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2017, told BuzzFeed News, “For us, when we were leading the Department of Justice, there was a keen sense that some of the most significant work had a target on it, and this has borne out to be true.” Yet in recent weeks, Trump has bludgeoned Sessions again for refusing to investigate Democrats close to president Barack Obama and his election rival Hillary Clinton. And Trump fumed when Sessions deflected requests to investigate the process by which Trump’s campaign allies were probed for their Russian alliances.



After each of Trump’s castigations, a question keeps percolating: Why hasn’t Trump just fired him?

 But this may be the wrong question — because we have a sense of why Trump hasn’t pulled the trigger. Trump’s advisers must know Sessions is adept. Not only skilled at advancing policy, Sessions hasn’t embarrassed himself by, say, ending up in the press for renting a private jet or ordering office furniture that cost more than your car. And replacing Sessions would be hell. Republicans in the US Senate, where Sessions last served, appear allergic to appointing a pushover a few months before their party risks a bloodbath in the midterm election. They’ve also bristled at Trump’s past threats at Sessions. Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which advances presidential judicial appointments, said on Twitter last July “no way” to the notion of appointing a new attorney general. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a member of the committee, said in a speech that if Trump wanted a recess appointment, "forget about it."

In the meantime, the line of succession at the DOJ begins with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who would likely present the same problems for Trump — like refusing to investigate the president's political enemies on a whim. And while Trump has the authority to appoint an acting attorney general outside of the line of succession, that would certainly come with its own political complications. But there is a question that’s not being asked as often: Why is Sessions staying onboard despite the abuse? Sessions has his dream job. Yet that’s not a satisfying answer alone, because what’s curious is why Sessions loves the DOJ so much that he’d endure harder punches than his predecessors. Sessions is loyal to his ideology — see: immigration, pot, religious freedom — but his true love is the rule of law. In a floor speech when he was a senator from Alabama, he talked about his “beloved Department of Justice,” and now as the department’s head, he renews vows almost weekly in speeches about the “rule of law.” When Sessions went after sanctuary cities in late January, he said they “undermine the rule of law,” and a few weeks before he’d warned that tolerating pot businesses “undermines the rule of law.” His department has issued statements on “the rule of law” as grounds to tighten immigration enforcement, rescind guidance documents, and hire more cops. When his former deputy Rachel Brand gave a speech on Feb. 15, the week after she announced plans to quit, she put it succinctly: “He is committed to ensuring that everything DOJ does promotes the rule of law.”

So what must Sessions think, then, when one the most powerful threats to the rule of law is Trump himself?

 Consider something Trump said on Wednesday, which Sessions may have found even more shocking than Trump’s Mr. Magoo taunt. “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said, talking about the response to shooters like the one in Parkland, Florida. It was just the latest instance of a Trump not knowing — or not caring — about the basics of American legal structure. Journalist Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the popular legal Lawfare blog, have become exasperated at Trump’s attack on the legal order, and distilled Trump’s attacks on the rule of law in the Atlantic this month like this: This includes Trump’s sinister interactions with his law-enforcement apparatus: his demands for criminal investigations of his political opponents, his pressuring of law-enforcement leaders on investigative matters, his frank efforts to interfere with investigations that implicate his personal interests, and his threats against the individuals who run the Justice Department. It also includes his attacks on federal judges, his pardon of a sheriff convicted of defying a court’s order to enforce constitutional rights, his belief that he gets to decide on Twitter who is guilty of what crimes, and his view that the justice system exists to effectuate his will. Sessions has defended these pillars of the legal order amid Trump’s attacks. Many of these institutions are housed inside the DOJ (like the FBI, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, and special counsel Robert Mueller). Others work with the DOJ (like local prosecutors and judges, who get to decide whether someone is charged or cleared of a crime). Sessions sees himself a bulwark to protect the rule of law — and that requires remaining in charge of the federal government’s foremost legal agency. This isn’t to say Sessions is fighting to protect Trump’s critics from the president. Sessions has been an ardent backer of Trump from the nascent days of the campaign — and again, they’re aligned on many goals that Sessions has helped accomplish. Sessions can be mushy on the law, too. He claimed that DACA was legally indefensible because a related, but separate, Obama administration policy concerning parents had been tossed out by a court. Critics and even a federal judge said that was an apples-to-oranges application of law. Sessions also sought to subvert Colorado state law that bans anti-gay discrimination, saying a Christian baker had a constitutional right to turn away gay couples. But Sessions has shown his allegiance to the White House, and his ideology, can take takes backseat when it comes to enforcing the law — and protecting law-enforcement institutions.

After claims that the FBI erred when it sought warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Sessions referred the matter to the department’s inspector general, the office responsible for investigating wrongdoing within the department.

 Trump on Wednesday called the move "DISGRACEFUL!," asking if the inspector general is "an Obama guy." In response, Sessions noted his role at the DOJ and how he plans to use it. “As long as I am the Attorney General,” Sessions said in a statement, “I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.” Yet perhaps nowhere is Sessions’ loyalty to the law — above all else — more obvious than with his handling of anti-LGBT hate crimes. Sessions voted against the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. But now that he’s attorney general, Sessions uses it. On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it had landed a 10-year sentence against a Texas man who’d committed an anti-gay hate crime — welding the same statute Sessions opposed, before it was actually the law.</s>President Trump is getting tired of do-little Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The President tuned up Sessions early Wednesday morning in a scorching Tweet that in truth, Sessions had coming to him.

Knowing Sessions, he will likely learn about the criticism weeks from now, when he wakes up from his latest taxpayer-funded nap.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri delivers a speech in the Congress to start the regular sessions for 2018.