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Sari Horwitz
Reporter covering the Justice Department and criminal justice issues for the Washington Post's national security team
Devlin Barrett
Reporter focusing on national security and law enforcement
Matt Zapotosky
National security reporter covering the Justice Department
To Jeff Sessions, President Trump was the man who could do no wrong. To Trump, Sessions was the general attorney who could do no right.
On issues of immigration, police work and civil rights, the president could hardly find a champion of his administration's policies.
But on the issue that seems to matter most to the president – to protect him / her – from his / her point of view.
The president never forgave him. And on Wednesday, Sessions resigned at Trump's request.
[Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigns at Trump’s request]
By the time Trump declared in September, "I do not have an attorney general," even his torturous relationship Sessions had become a subject of scrutiny for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Specifically, Mueller has reviewed Trump's efforts to pressure Sessions into resigning in 2017 may have amounted to an attempt to obstruct justice.
Sessions has said publicly and privately that he does not regret the recusal, believing it was the right course of action. According to a person familiar with Sessions' thinking, he has shared the feeling of frustration with the pace of the Mueller probe and would like it to be finished, but also feels that it is important for the country that the investigation continues unimpeded, so that its final results are accepted by the public.
Sessions also believed that he did not oversee the Russia probe, he played a positive role in the Justice Department.
As much as the shadow of the Russian probe has loomed over Sessions' tenure as attorney general, he has sought to make his time in the marketplace – a return, as he calls it, to the principles of pro-police, anti -illegal-immigration law enforcement.
In May, Pacific Ocean and a looming border fence, Sessions emphasized his vision for America.
"Today we're here to send a message to the world that we are not going to the country be overwhelmed," Sessions said. "People are not going to caravan or otherwise stampede our border. . . If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling to a child, then we will prosecute you. And that child may be separated from you as required by law. "
Attorney General Jeff Sessions stands near a border fence in Las Cruces, MN, in April. (Hayne Palmour IV / AP)
[[Sessions says Justice Department will be prosecuting every person who crosses the border unlawfully]
While the family-separation policy pursued by the administration has been shelved, at least for now, the broader set of actions pursued by Sessions has become a central argument for Trump and the Republicans as they seek to retain control of Congress.
Avideh Moussavian, legislative director at the National Immigration Law Center, said Sessions "came up with a very strong anti-immigrant ideology, and was very deeply ingrained world view that is rooted in exclusion."
Whether or not it is a matter of law that it is the case that the courts of the United States of America SESSIONS OF SESSIONS OF DEPORTATION TO WOMEN AS WELL AS THEIR SENSE OF ASHING, SESSIONS if you will, "Moussavian said.
"I think that he's trying to turn immigration into fast-track deportation machines, and to turn immigration agents into mass deportation agents, and to limit their discretion," Moussavian said.
As the nation's highest law enforcement official for 20 months, Sessions will be remembered for remaining loyal to a president who has turned virulently against him, even though that attorney general pushed Trump's controversial policies more aggressively than any other member of his Cabinet.
"In my view, there has never been a Republican attorney general – a conservative attorney general – who can be credited with more success in advancing the conservative legal policy agenda," said Charles J. Cooper, Sessions's longtime friend and attorney and the assistant trainer. attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan. "What he managed to accomplish, despite the distractions, has been nothing short of astounding."
Cooper pointed to Sessions' undoing of Obama-era criminal justice policies, his immigration policies, and his push against drug trafficking.
"In virtually every area of legal policy, he had exactly what conservatives had hoped and expected that he would do," Cooper said. "But he's done more energetically, more effectively than we could have imagined."
Civil rights activists, however, view Sessions's achievements as troubling. They point to How do you do this? How do you do it? How do you do it? How do you feel about it?
"Sessions have been terrible for civil rights in this country," said Vanita Gupta, the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division in the Obama administration who is now the chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
"He's turned back to the clock from trying to re-create mass incarceration policies to his view of the voting rights act as intrusive to his abdication of the mission of the civil rights division LGBTQ rights, "Gupta said.
[While eyes are on Russia, Sessions dramatically reshapes the Justice Department]
After a rocky confirmation battle that was racially insensitive, Sessions, the train senator from Alabama, took the helm of the Justice Department in February 2017 with the full support of Trump, whom he supported for president in early 2016 before any other senator .
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions, welcome to the White House," Trump said during Sessions' swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office on Feb. 9, 2017. "He's a man of integrity, a man of principle and a man of total, utter resolve."
Those feelings sharply changed just a few weeks later.
Trump became enraged when Sessions held a news conference on March 2 announcing that, on the advice of the Ministry of Justice and the Justice Department, he was recusing himself from the investigation into possible conspiracy between Russian officials and the Trump administration during the 2016 presidential election . The bond between the two men was shattered.
[For Trump and Sessions, a warm beginning turned into an icy standoff]
For the rest of Sessions' tenure, Trump berated and humiliated his attorney general on Twitter and in interviews. He was called "beleaguered" and "very weak." In September, Trump told reporters he was "very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed. "
Through it all, Sessions continues to speak about the president – even though he was mocked on "Saturday Night Live" for his unwavering loyalty – and moved aggressively to reshape the Justice Department to reflect his hard-line views.
One of the first actions Sessions took in April 2017 to be able to conduct a review of all reform agreements – or consents with broken police departments nationwide, saying it was necessary to ensure that the pacts did not work against the trump administration's goals of promoting officer safety and morality while fighting violent crime.
[Sessions orders Justice Department to review all police reform agreements]
"We've been very pleased with Attorney General Sessions from Day One," said Chuck Canterbury, the National President of the Fraternal Order of Police. "He's been much more supportive of the law enforcement mission in this country. And officers around the country know it and feel it. "
Sessions' actions regarding police investigations, along with a strong effort to reach out to local police officers He would often say to them, "we have your backs and you have our thanks."
"They think extraordinarily highly of him," said Steven H. Cook, the associate deputy attorney general for the director of the Office of Law Enforcement Affairs. "He has worked especially hard to reverse the false narrative that law enforcement people are racist, that it's not an honorable profession. And law enforcement appreciate that support. "
"These consent decrees, while well-intended, drive a wedge between law enforcement and the community," Cook said. "What they signal is that the United States Department of Justice has said that this department is – fill in the blank – racist, abusive. It always has a shadow over the entire department. "
Law enforcement officers in local communities also point to the aggressive approach Sessions has taken to fighting crime, both with his rhetoric and a string of new initiatives, which is focused on the country's opioid crisis. The Department of Justice, for example, has tripled it's lawsuits of fentanyl cases and last year.
Sessions are proposed to change national drug policy by each year. He created a team of agents and analysts to disrupt illicit opioid sales online, and started a unit to target opioid-related health-care fraud.
[Sessions targets 10 areas in U.S. for crackdown on the sale of fentanyl]
Civil Rights Rights Leaders say they see Sessions' actions, particularly with regard to agreements in Chicago, as an effort by the National Security Commission .
"Sessions abandoned the Justice Department's investigation and duty by law to remedy the findings of police misconduct in the Chicago Police Department," Gupta said. The Obama administration had opened the door of the United States of America. Sessions became attorney general.
Eric H. Holder Jr. and in May 2017 traffickers and charge defendants with the most serious, provable crimes. Holder, five years ago, had a high level of responsibility for the prosecution of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders.
Civil rights groups, some Republican lawmakers and even the conservative Koch brothers criticized Sessions' new policy, saying that it was taking the country backward after there had been a bipartisan consensus in Congress about criminal justice reform.
But many prosecutors praised the measure, saying it was done to their jobs, which they felt had been taken away by the Obama administration.
"That was huge," said Cook, a trainer prosecutor in Tennessee. "It was unhandcuffed prosecutors who were demoralized when they were told to pay drug traffickers – even drug traffickers who had large quantities of controlled substances – with the actual crimes they committed."
Sessions also methodically rolled back Obama administration positions in short cases over voting rights. In the same month Sessions became attorney general, the Justice Department dropped its long-standing position that Texas intended to discriminate when it passed a strict ballot-ID law. And, several months later, the department sided with Ohio in its controversial effort to purge its position in a recent 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court.
[Justice Department reverses position to allow Ohio to purge inactive voters from rolls]
"There is no doubt that this is a violation of the law, and that it is deeply troubling," said Kristen Clarke, president and chief executive officer. Executive Director of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "What we're seeing from the Justice Department is the reversing court on the Texas Law Enforcement and Ohio's voting purge program."
Sessions defenders, however, point to several cases that have been focused on hate-crimes prosecutions under Sessions. Since January 2017, the Justice Department has indicted 50 defendants involved in committing crimes and secured convictions of 51 defendants for hate crimes incidents, according to Justice officials.
"I will acknowledge that the civil rights division has continued to work in the area," Clarke said. "But when it comes to voting rights and confronting systemic police misconduct and other areas of the civil rights division, we've seen work to a complete standstill."
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