Jeff Sessions just blew it, and he may have finally punched his ticket to prison
If Jeff Sessions were removed as Attorney General, it would make it far easier for Donald Trump to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which may be the only reason Mueller hasn’t yet put Sessions inside a prison cell. Sessions committed felony perjury during his confirmation hearing more than a year ago, ensuring that the Trump-Russia scandal will inevitably end with Sessions cutting a plea deal or standing trial. But now Sessions has just blown it in such a way that he’s facing far more trouble.
Last week Trump ordered Sessions to fire FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in an attempt at sabotaging the Trump-Russia probe, and Sessions obliged. This meant that, at the least, Trump was committing obstruction of justice and Sessions was helping Trump to conspire to obstruct justice, and that they were both going to be charged for it in the end. Now it turns out to have been much more complicated, because McCabe had authorized a criminal probe into Sessions’ perjury.
The Department of Justice is officially claiming today that Sessions didn’t know McCabe was investigating him at the time he fired McCabe, according to CBS News and other sources (link). But there’s no reason to expect Sessions wouldn’t have known about something like this, through official or unofficial channels. In fact Sessions would have to reasonably demonstrate that he didn’t know, which could be difficult.
If it can be demonstrated that Jeff Sessions knew about the investigation into his own behavior when he fired Andrew McCabe, that means Sessions is facing far more severe criminal penalties. It’s one thing to go along with your supervisor’s order to help obstruct an investigation into his criminal behavior. It’s an entirely different thing to obstruct an investigation into your own criminal behavior. Even if Sessions does cut a plea deal, or even if he’s already cut a plea deal, it’s now difficult to imagine that deal not including prison time.
