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FROM EIR DAILY ALERT


Sessions Resigns, Whitaker Is Acting Attorney General

Nov. 7, 2018 (EIRNS)—Jeff Sessions wrote a letter to President Donald Trump today that opened with the sentence, “At your request, I am submitting my resignation.” President Trump tweeted,

“We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our country well. We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well! A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date.”

A number of Democrats are concerned, because, when asked about Whitaker’s role in the Mueller investigation, a Justice Department spokesman said, “The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice.”

In August 2017, Whitaker asserted in an op-ed for CNN about the Mueller investigation:

“It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer went ballistic, saying that Whitaker should recuse himself from responsibility for the investigation for making this (legally correct) statement about it, and even said that limiting the Mueller investigation would trigger a “Constitutional crisis.”

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