July 2017.

Nothing appeals more than spewing invective into the vicinity of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.  In a rational world, Mr. Sessions would never have been confirmed as attorney general.  He is the same man who couldn’t pass muster for a federal judgeship in 1986 because of his bigotry.  Was it to be supposed that he grew more tolerant in the interim?  Anyway, he had the brass ring in a death grip and it would have to be prized from his fingers.  It may have been just as well that he remained in place for a while if it ensured that the country would endure less of William Barr or someone worse.  Mr. Sessions is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging doofus.  William Barr is competently malevolent.  There remains little sport in lambasting Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.  It’s the rhetorical equivalent of shooting catfish in a barrel.  The Washington Post passed on this response to its news reporting.  I can’t imagine why, he says to himself ironically.

Here’s the article by Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz and Matt Zapotosky:

Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz, and Matt Zapotosky, “Jeff Sessions Says He Plans to Stay in Role, Despite Trump’s Comments about Him,” The Washington Post, 20 July 2017 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-says-he-plans-to-stay-in-role-despite-trumps-comments-about-him/2017/07/20/527e53d4-6d51-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html).

Here’s the unpublished letter:

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s determination to remain U. S. Attorney General is unfortunate.  Mr. Sessions’ antediluvian attitude toward voting rights, his antipathy toward immigrants, and his resolve to resuscitate a failed war on drugs should have disqualified him from the office.  He has blemished the position by enabling Mr. Trump’s basest, most autocratic impulses.  His lone unsordid act – recusal from the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election – was not motivated by principle but by backlash against his dissembling under oath.

     In the face of Mr. Trump’s recent and somewhat bizarre criticism of him, integrity demands that Mr. Sessions resign.  Nothing indeed would so become Mr. Sessions in his time as Attorney General as his leaving of it, if he can muster sufficient principle to use his departure to make a statement:  the Attorney General serves at the President’s will but is not and cannot be the chief executive’s lackey.