Has Jeff Sessions cut a deal with Robert Mueller?
From the day Jeff Sessions recused himself in the Trump-Russia investigation, two things were clear. First, Sessions would try to hang onto the Attorney General job as long as he could, by any means necessary, in order to fulfill his lifelong ambition of carrying out institutionally racist policies. Second, Sessions would selfishly protect himself in the scandal by cutting a deal against Donald Trump as soon as he felt he needed to. In light of this weekend’s events, it’s time to ask if Sessions has already cut a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Today, Reuters reported that Sessions lied to Congress not just about his Russian meetings, but about his supposed pushback against the Trump campaign’s Russian involvement (link). That means Sessions is in even deeper legal trouble than we thought – unless he’s already found a way to get himself off the hook. So let’s look at what we do know about Sessions’ behavior over the past year-plus, and how it might fit or not fit with the premise that he’s already cut a plea deal.
Sessions made clear with his initial recusal that he had no interest in putting his own freedom at risk in the name of protecting Trump in the Russia scandal. That means Sessions was always going to cut a plea deal once things reached a point where he felt he needed to. But in these kinds of multi-level investigations, seeking a plea deal can be tricky to time correctly. Mueller has already cut so many deals, and presumably gained so much evidence against Trump in the process, it’s no longer a guarantee that Sessions would be able to get a favorable deal for himself.
Sessions is politically savvy enough to have survived this long in politics despite being so corrupt objectively reprehensible. He’s familiar enough with Mueller to know that everyone who committed any crime in relation to the Trump-Russia scandal will be prosecuted for it, including Sessions’ felony perjury to the Senate during his confirmation hearings. He’s known all along that his only way to avoid serious prison time would be to cut a deal. Further, Sessions knows how plea deals work in these kinds of probes. He has to have known from the start that the best time to cut a deal for himself would have been at the very start.
So let’s say Sessions cut a plea deal with Robert Mueller last summer, shortly after Mueller took over the investigation. Sessions would have insisted on keeping his Attorney General job for as long as possible, and Mueller could have agreed to that, under the premise that it’s better to have a man on the inside. Sessions has consistently done just enough of Trump’s bidding to avoid getting fired, which is precisely how Mueller would have instructed him to handle things.
We have no way of knowing if Jeff Sessions has indeed cut such a deal. But if he has flipped, it would make sense that he went through with the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Friday at Donald Trump’s instruction. If Sessions had refused, he’d have been fired, and Trump would have merely found someone else to fire McCabe before the day was over. Instead, Sessions helped Trump commit yet another prosecutable instance of obstruction of justice (and possibly witness tampering). On the other hand, if Sessions hasn’t cut a deal, then he just put himself on the hook for obstruction of justice by helping Trump to get rid of McCabe.
