Jeff Sessions’s dinner with Rod Rosenstein and Noel Francisco, explained

On Wednesday night, the head of a federal agency went out to dinner with his deputy and the No. 3 official at his department at a posh restaurant in Washington, DC.

That does not, on its face, sound like a particularly interesting or unusual turn of events. But in the mixed-up world of Trump-era Washington, a dinner with colleagues at Central Michel Richard isn’t just a dinner with colleagues — it’s another subplot in the intrigue of Donald Trump scandal.

Sessions’s decision to take a meal in public with two top aides at a popular (and, if I may say, delicious) downtown restaurant across the street from the Trump International Hotel was a powerful symbol of both the attorney general’s independence from Trump and the limits of that integrity.

Trump’s feud with his attorney general, explained

The origins of this story date back to Sessions’s confirmation hearings early last year when then-Sen. Al Franken asked Sessions if he knew anything about campaign-era meetings between the Trump campaign and anyone from the Russian government. This was a critical opportunity Franken seized, because the vast majority of Trump’s Senate-confirmed appointees didn’t play a role on the campaign — making Sessions an unusual chance for Democrats to grill a campaign official under oath about the Russia issue.

Sessions said no and testified, “I did not have communications with the Russians.”

The Washington Post then reported on March 1, 2017, that this was false and Sessions had in fact met twice with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. When that information became public, Sessions insisted that the meetings were innocuous and not related to his campaign work — subsequent reporting casts serious doubt on this — but nonetheless agreed to “recuse” himself from work related to the ongoing FBI inquiry into Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election.

That, in turn, became a big deal two months later, in May, when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, lied about why he fired Comey, and then swiftly admitted the firing was actually about Russia.

Trump’s swift turnaround, in particular, put Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an awkward position, since it was Rosenstein who penned the memo — arguing that Comey erred in his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation during the 2016 campaign by, in essence, being too tough on her — that served as the cover story. Rosenstein was now both in the hot seat and, due to Sessions’s recusal, in charge of the Russian investigation. He responded by agreeing to appoint a special counsel. And not just any special counsel but an extremely high-powered one in the form of former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Trump has, ever since, blamed Sessions’s recusal for many of the troubles his administration has faced — arguing that Sessions handed the wheel over to Rosenstein, who then stabbed the administration in the back.

Trump relaunched the feud with Sessions on Wednesday

Trump’s feuding with Sessions has been an on-again, off-again theme over the past nine months, but he relaunched it on Wednesday with a complaint that the attorney general wasn’t going far enough to help him foster a conspiracy theory about the origins of the Russia investigation.

The specific issue here is that Trump continues to believe — backed up by his favorite information sources at Fox News but contrary to all the available evidence — that the origin of the Trump-Russia investigation was an improper decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to agree to surveillance of Trump adviser Carter Page based on allegations contained in the Steele dossier.

Critically, none of this is true:

• The Trump-Russia investigation began because George Papadopoulos told Australia’s ambassador to the UK that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.
• Surveillance on Page was justified by ample corroborating evidence beyond the Steele dossier, and was renewed several times because judges (all appointed to the federal bench by GOP presidents and selected for FISC duty by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts) deemed the ongoing surveillance to be fruitful.
• The investigation itself, far from a witch hunt, has already led to several guilty pleas and more indictments.

Trump, however, is sticking with his story that the surveillance was improper. Sessions attempted to address that concern days earlier by announcing an inspector general inquiry. But for Trump’s purposes, an inquiry is useless since it won’t vindicate his position. What he needs is an ongoing complaint — in this case, the complaint that tapping the IG to do the inquiry is a mistake and it should really be done by Justice Department lawyers.

The reality, obviously, is that the IG’s office is composed of DOJ lawyers, specifically the DOJ lawyers who are charged with doing internal investigations.

Sessions defends himself, not necessarily the rule of law

Facing criticism from Trump, Sessions pushed back in a statement, saying that “as long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.”

The statement was welcome, so far as it goes, but it fit into a larger pattern with Sessions that is somewhat troubling — he pushed back when he personally is attacked, but he does not use his office to defend the larger interests and integrity of the department he oversees.

Under Sessions’s watch, a large number of senior DOJ or FBI personnel — including Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok — have had their names dragged through the mud by President Trump, his top aides, congressional Republicans, and conservative media, and Sessions hasn’t said or done anything to stand up for them. That’s troubling in its specific implications for the Russia investigation, though realistically, with Mueller at the helm and the media paying close attention, it seems likely the inquiry will go forward relatively unimpeded.

But it’s also troubling in a more general sense that the signals from the very top of the government seem to be that Trump would not hesitate to punish federal law enforcement officials who make trouble for him and his friends, and that the attorney general will not stand up for rank-and-file officials who are merely doing their jobs.

Sessions’s limited pushback this week fits that pattern — he defended himself and his own conduct but not the professionalism of Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz (a veteran career prosecutor who served in various roles under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush before Obama came along) or the basic concept of nonpartisan government service. In Trump’s view, everyone’s job is to serve Trump. Neither Sessions nor Rosenstein is doing that adequately, there’s no reason to think Horowitz would, and it’s certainly not what Mueller is doing.

The Mueller probe is for real, and Trump could end it

The larger background here is that after months in which the conventional wisdom in Washington alighted around the notion that Mueller had largely dismissed allegations of collusion, it’s become clear that collusion really is on the table.

Recent reports have Mueller asking tough questions about Trump’s pre-2016 business dealings in Russia, his knowledge of the Clinton email situation, his pressure campaign against Sessions, and basically everything else under the sun. It’s certainly possible that Trump is entirely innocent, but Mueller certainly does not appear to have reached that conclusion, and pressure is steadily ratcheting up on critical Trumpworld figures.

In that context, Trump always has the option to blow up the Mueller investigation.

• He could fire Sessions and appoint a new, non-recused attorney general who would fire Mueller.
• He could fire Rosenstein and then ask Noel Francisco to fire Mueller.
• If necessary, he could fire Francisco too.
• He could also keep Mueller in place but effectively neuter him by pardoning the various people he has indicted or extracted guilty pleas from.

The barriers to all these moves are fundamentally political rather than constitutional or legal. And the quiet message of the dinner meeting at Central is that the political cost would likely be high — with senior political appointees at Justice having each other’s backs, if not necessarily anyone else's.