President Donald Trump announced today, Wednesday, the departure of Federal Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who submitted his resignation at the president’s request.
“We are delighted to announce that Matthew Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the Department of Justice, will become the Acting Attorney General of the United States,” Trump announced on Twitter.
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“We appreciate,” the president continued, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service and we wish him well! A permanent substitute will be nominated at a later date.”
The up to now maximum responsible for Justice of the Executive communicated his resignation in a letter sent to the president, made public today, in which the date is not specified.
“At your request, I send my resignation,” says Sessions in the letter signed by him, in which he did not criticize the president and limited himself to thanking the work done to the staff of the department he directed.
The situation between Trump and Sessions has been tense, with ups and downs for more than a year, as a result of the decision of the Attorney General to refrain from investigating the Russian plot for his contacts with Moscow.
This step preceded the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller to investigate independently the alleged coordination between the president’s campaign and the Kremlin in the 2016 elections.
Last August, Trump denounced that “Jeff Sessions moved away, something he should not have done or should have told me, he accepted the job and then said: ‘I’m going to move away (from research on Russia).’ man is that? ”
The president never accepted the step taken by Sessions, which led to the “number two” of the Department of Justice, Rod Rosenstein, take the reins on the investigations of the Russian plot and appoint Mueller.
The president’s attacks on Mueller have raised concerns among the opposition and part of the conservatives about the danger that he will end up ordering the dismissal of the special prosecutor, something that Sessions could have done if it had not been inhibited.