The FRONTLINE Interviews

Cameron Smith

Former Aide to Jeff Sessions

Cameron Smith is general counsel and vice president of implementation for the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. He previously served as counsel to Sen. Jeff Sessions on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk conducted on June 13, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Who is Jeff Sessions when he walks out there on that stage and puts on the “Make America Great Again” white hat with Donald Trump in the campaign?

Jeff Sessions is somebody who values the rule of law, who has looked at his public service as an enterprise that's bigger than himself.This is something that's worthy and laudable and something that needs people willing to sacrifice for themselves.If you hadn't noticed, when he’s on stage and in the camera, he’s not a flowery speaker.He’s not someone who is maybe the greatest retail politician, but he’s been faithful to the rule of law.You can disagree with his policy preferences and different political views, but he’s been very consistent.He wants to uphold the Constitution, protect the rule of law, and he believes that America is a shining city on a hill, much like the folks who grew up in the Reagan Revolution believed.And I think he has a lot of fidelity to that vision of America, and is willing to put himself through a lot to protect it.

What's his resume?How did he get started?How did he get into the law?What has he done?

Well, he grew up in Alabama, I believe it was in Camden, and then went up through school in Alabama at University of Alabama School of Law, was attorney general in the state of Alabama, and ultimately became senator in Alabama.When he became attorney general, I would say [he was] the most influential and powerful politician in Alabama.Everyone would talk about how they would stand next to Jeff Sessions and how conservative they were.He was the metric by which other politicians espoused how they were worthy of the votes of the people of Alabama.

So it's very, very interesting to see people now questioning his conservatism, questioning his fidelity to America when just a couple years ago, he was sort of the standard by which very conservative candidates wanted to measure themselves.

What's he like personally?

He’s an interesting man.He’s always thinking.As a staffer, it was interesting that he would cut out articles and stick them in the office and say, “Hey, what are we going to do about this?"He’s a well-read man.He’s not somebody that just goes off the cuff.He’s researching, thinking.The last time I saw him, he was talking about ideas.And these are after the attacks from the president, and he’s talking about ideas—no mention of the president or how poorly he’s been treated; not one word.

[He’s] a gentleman who believes in ideals that are, again, greater than himself.And that's a very unusual combination in D.C. these days.

Is he fun or super-serious?

He’s actually a lot more fun than people would think.I think when you see him on stage, you get this sense of “I'm saying my thing."I'm not sure he’s entirely comfortable on stage.I don't think that he really relishes the opportunity to go up and be a front person.We've seen him a lot on the Senate floor on immigration.He carried the water in the Senate on a lot of different immigration issues.He seems to be in his element there.

But in terms of interactions with former staff, interactions with the people that work for him and have worked with him, he's a very gracious, warm man.Tries to engage folks, have a conversation with them.And it’s important to remember that he’s a husband and a father and a grandfather, too.Talks about his family, his kids.I see his wife with him.Many of the times that I've seen him outside of a professional capacity, his wife has been there, and he’s very much a family-oriented man.Pretty normal, actually.

Tough guy?

The idea of tough guy is not a word that I would use because I get the sense of that sort of blustery, bullish perspective.He is a resilient man.He is a strong individual with a lot of personal integrity and the ability to endure, but he’s not ever going to be a bull in a china shop.He's never going to be the kind of person that is going to try to pick fights.But he's not weak either.And this notion of, well, he must be weak because of his recusal or these other things, that's false.

He was a U.S. attorney.

I believe he was.

So he also knows and understands how the Justice Department works, presumably?

Yes.And as attorney general in Alabama, that's the state level; it’s a very process-oriented mindset.It's we have agreed on this legal process; we have agreed on the laws that are in the books.It is not up to him as the enforcer of the laws to change them as he sees fit because they disagree with maybe his personal policy proclivities.And that's a situation that's different than what we've seen from others who have said: “Well, if we don’t like the outcome, then maybe we don’t enforce the law in a certain way.If we would like to see this done differently, we’ll use an enforcement push or pull to get the result we want."

Sessions doesn’t believe that.He sees, for example, the laws as Congress’s responsibility.If you want immigration reform, if you want to change immigration law, Congress needs to do that.It doesn't need to be done by enforcement modification and things along those lines.And that's a big difference, I think, from his predecessors in the Obama administration, where he’s looking at it and looking at the rule of law.There have been instances where the rule of law is clear, for example, on cannabis issues that I think he’s probably been held at bay by the administration.But he’s looking at the rule of law and saying: “What does the law say?What are the facts?And I'm going to enforce the law dispassionately."

How important to Trump's successful candidacy was Sen. Sessions’ early adoption, early endorsement of Donald Trump?

Sessions’ early endorsement of Trump was particularly important to his candidacy.I know that Ted Cruz and his folks would have liked that endorsement and didn't get it.I scratched my head at the time.I was very concerned: “Why are you endorsing this person?"And I think my perspectives were a lot like other conservatives at the time saying: “This is a New York businessman who is sort of Republican-ish who doesn't really, if you look at the track record, support any sort of conservative moniker.Just doesn't seem like a good, natural fit."

I suspect a willingness to engage on maybe trade policy preferable to Sessions and immigration issues were something that interested Trump and interested Sessions, and they found some connectivity there.But because Sessions endorsed Trump, Trump didn't have to prove that he was a conservative at all, because Jeff Sessions is sort of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for a lot of conservatives, particularly in the South, where Trump was very successful.Had he not been given that endorsement, Trump would have had to explain to a lot of red-state voters how this New York businessman and television personality was one of them.He didn't have to do that in the primary.

Sessions’ core, it sounds like, is yes, serious Seal of Approval on conservative issues and apparently a savvy politician.He picked Donald Trump when no one else did.

Well, I think he saw an opportunity for a candidate who was different.Sessions was a populist before being a populist was cool.He is not someone I would in any way describe as Washington elite.That's not his personality; it’s not how he’s run his time in the Legislature, in Congress.He’s very much a man of the people.That's how he thinks.In terms of the policies that he’s looking at, he’s looking at them because of their impact on everyday Americans.He’s not trying to curry favor with the wealthy or, as he calls them, the masters of the universe that sort of decide things for the rest of us.

I think that is something that I suspect Trump picked up on, not just from Sessions, but from a lot of conservatives who were disaffected, who had sort of looked at this and said: “Washington has nothing for me.They don’t care about me.They’ve got special things for everybody else, but I'm sort of left on my own, and I get to help foot the bill."That was a sentiment that was palpable.I think Trump tapped into that and probably learned a lot about it because of Jeff Sessions.

Is there a kind of a personal bond between the two, Trump and Sessions?Back in that time, are they connected in ways that are other than policy?

I can't speak to as far as their personal relationship at that time.I do know that their relationship was good enough that you saw a lot of people who had worked for Sessions, who had worked not just for him presently but had previously worked for him, moving over into the campaign, moving over into the administration.You had folks like [Senior Policy Adviser ] Stephen Miller, [Deputy Chief of Staff] Rick Dearborn, who from the very beginning had jumped over and were helping support the Trump campaign.

You know Miller?

I don't know him well.We've had a handful of interactions.

Because you're right about that.That is the linkage, the Miller-Bannon-Breitbart-Sessions, that evolution, and the story goes that [White House Chief Strategist Steve] Bannon once said to Sessions, “You should run for president,” and Sessions said, “I'm not that guy."

Well, a lot of the political savvy was Rick Dearborn, not Stephen Miller.I mean, I owe a lot of my career to Rick.He actually had a moment when I was a very young attorney on Senate Judiciary where he set it straight and made sure that I knew that the only reason I would be successful in Washington was how hard I worked and had some very choice words for me because I thought I was a pretty big deal.

His political career has kind of run the spectrum.He was with Heritage; he’s worked in other administrations.Obviously longtime chief of staff for Sessions.I think he and Sessions have some—for as different as they are—carry some similar characteristics.For example, Rick is probably the only official that you didn't hear a lot about during his tenure at the White House.He didn’t upstage the president, didn't create distractions for the president.And as we can see with this administration, you have staff moving all over the place, staff making headlines.Rick really didn't during his tenure, and he was with the president from the time Sessions endorsed on.

So Trump wins.From the very beginning, does Sessions know he’s going to be the pick for attorney general?

I don't know.During that time, I had openly criticized Sessions for endorsing Trump.I said that the match on character was not similar.It was a very difficult decision for me.I wrote a column in Alabama to that effect, saying the alignment between what the senator valued and what I knew of Trump at the time didn’t seem to align.

What did you mean?

Well, I meant that you see someone who is very flamboyant, not particularly conservative in his perspectives.I'm a policy guy; I'm an ideas guy.So I looked at here's what I've known about this candidate, and some of the things—for example, free trade, life issues—some of the things that are important, had historically been important to conservatives, I didn't necessarily see as connecting.Obviously, the senator saw some things that I didn’t see.

What do you think he saw?

I think he saw somebody that would listen to him.Sen. Sessions was asked to do a lot in the Senate, particularly on immigration being the foremost issue with which he was sort of tied, and didn't get as much backing as I think he would have hoped.A lot of people [were] saying: “Hey, will you do this?Will you work on this?Will you lead the charge?"And then at the end of the day, things failed; there was not a lot of traction.Now, in all fairness, he was able to stop some much larger immigration reform immigration bills in the mid-2000s.

… It was mostly the concern that he had an ear of somebody who would listen to him.He saw that the populist trend, the disfavor with Washington, was high, so to look at the field and say, “I know many of you.A [Florida Sen. Marco] Rubio or a [Texas Sen. Ted] Cruz or even a [Florida Gov. Jeb] Bush, these are known quantities.I know my relationship with them."And then to see somebody like Trump coming in to say: “Hey, we're tired of what's happening in Washington.We're tired of, as I mentioned, the masters of the universe telling us what to do and not caring about our interests."

So he took a flier with Trump, or a calculated risk?

Sure.And to his credit, the upside was extremely high.The relative risk was low.He could have been senator in Alabama as long as he wanted.There's no issue of could he have kept doing what he was doing?Supporting Trump, obviously, if you look at the state of Alabama and you look at how Trump performed in Alabama, there was a lot of alignment.It certainly didn't hurt him in his home state, and the upside is the person you endorse becomes president of the United States, and then you become attorney general.

So here's Trump.Part of our film, one of the things our film has done, is we follow Trump through New York as a young man and then an older man, and his relationship to the law here, real estate law, zoning law, regulations, 4,500 lawsuits filed by his attorneys at one time or another.… But we also follow him when he lands in Washington, first interacting with [FBI Director] Jim Comey.… People in New York have said to us, “If ever there was a guy who was unprepared to confront the rule of law in Washington, it was definitely Donald Trump."

Well, I think the practice of law versus the rule of law are very different things.The practice of law is service to a client; it is working to defend their ends, to make sure that you're protecting someone’s interest in a very specific way.Lawyers across the country deal with that.They have fidelity to their client.Now, they don’t break the law; they can't do things that are illegal.But they need to aggressively defend their client’s interest.That's what a good lawyer does.

The rule of law is a bit different.This is a situation where we have processes that we have agreed upon in our republic as to how we administer the law and certain norms and expectations that are there.The way I would couch it in terms of what I see in the president is somebody who’s very interested in the outcomes that he wants.He is an instinctive operator and says, “This is the goal; you attorneys figure it out,” where[as] the rule of law tends to lend itself more toward process.Is the process followed?Is this law duly enacted?Is the enforcement of this law consistent with what Congress intended?Or is this the administration taking a flier on “We just don’t like it, and we’ll do it differently”?

That was one of the big critiques of the Obama administration, was with DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], with some of the cannabis enforcement.Things like that, they just sort of ignored, materially, aspects of the law, and conservatives said: “We're tired of that.We don’t want people who act unilaterally.We have a process; we need to respect the process."

That's why it’s very funny now to see a lot of Republicans on the other side saying, “Well, it’s whatever the president wants."That was absolutely not the attitude during the Obama administration.It was: “You need to respect the rule of law.You need to respect the process."Many Republicans have said, “Well, we kind of like the outcomes we get with the president acting unilaterally, doing things on his own, so maybe it’s not so bad."

I submit that it’s way better for us to adhere to the process, to revert to that rather than having this back-and-forth based on political willpower.

When Jeff Sessions is nominated to be the attorney general by this man that you're describing, Donald Trump, an outcome-driven, “Let's build a building,” “Let's get it done,” that guy, does Sessions think of himself probably as the bulwark for rule of law, the guy who will make sure that the process of the Justice Department and the other divisions, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will be adhered to, followed, in that sense?

Absolutely.Sessions, you can go back through his whole career and see references to the rule of law.This is not simply a passing phrase that the attorney general looks at and says, “Oh, this is a neat rhetorical device."He really sees this as: “Here's the process; here's what we've agreed to.We need to take these laws as enacted by Congress and signed by the president and apply them to the facts here and make prosecution decisions, administrative decisions consistent with that and consistent with the constitution."It’s not decidedly sexy, but it’s absolutely how he operates.

But Trump sees Bobby and Jack Kennedy or something, yeah?

I think it was Anthony Scaramucci, [who served as White House communications director for 10 days in 2017], who said the president expects the attorney general to be a hockey goalie of sorts .I think that's a terrible model.We want an independent Justice Department.The arm’s-length distance is very, very important because politicized justice, Republican justice, Democratic justice, that's not justice; that's politics, and we need to root out the politics insofar as they affect things like prosecution decisions.

Everyone in the administration is political, even career people in the sense that they have political perspectives.That's not the problem.The problem is when those perspectives materially impact decisions to prosecute, to fine, to take professional action, because the American people have to have trust in the institution and believe that that application of justice is as equal as it can be.

So when Jeff Sessions takes the oath and goes to the office believing that he’s doing what you’ve just articulated, at that very same time, Donald Trump is sizing up Jim Comey, a dinner where it’s “Let’s have a loyalty thing."… I suppose he’s hoping that Sessions will get in there and organize all that so that it isn't coming at him over months and months and months and distracting his entire early part of his presidency?

Well, I think it's fair to say that the president probably carried his view of personal private attorneys over into his role as president and viewed the Department of Justice as owing him a degree of loyalty in terms of his personal legal matters and things along those lines.Normally, this isn't a problem, because normally you don’t have, with the exception of Watergate, more often than not you're not having investigations into the president.There are investigations into sensitive people and to other politicians.And I shouldn’t even say into the president—I should say investigations into events that could implicate the president in a certain way.

But ultimately, the Department of Justice is a different animal than private attorneys, and I think that it’s understandable for any president to come in and say: “Here's my prior experience with attorneys.Here's the attorney general and the Department of Justice.I should probably use them similarly to how I've used attorneys in the past."The fact that he didn't really course-correct, and I think still carries some of that “Why are you not taking care of these things?I don’t want to hassle with that,” I very much think that the president views a lot of this as hassle and bureaucracy and things that he shouldn’t have to deal with.

I don’t necessarily believe that he’s particularly worried that he’s somehow going to be implicated in a way that would result in him being impeached, or something along those lines.

So in a way, he thinks of the Justice Department as a big law firm?

Sure.And it is a huge law firm, in a sense.But maintaining the independence from politics, he may not necessarily—the president may not necessarily see himself as a politician.Very much sees himself as outside of the swamp.The fact is, he's a politician.He is a Republican president of the United States, and when it comes to political interest in beating candidates and supporting other candidates, that's great.When it moves over to Justice, the politics has to come out.It can't be, “I like this person; therefore, I'm not going to prosecute them,” or, “I don’t like them; therefore I'm going to punish them."That's what we see in places like Venezuela and Russia, where it’s cronyist justice.That is not something that has a place in the United States.

So your boss, your former boss, Sen. Sessions, now Attorney General Sessions, is informed by people at the Justice Department that he’s going to have to recuse himself.To the extent that you can, take me there.What's it like for him to hear that?What's he likely to have done when it dawns on him that he might have to recuse?

Well, very clearly he asked career professionals on this.Incidentally, this is not abnormal for an attorney general to say: “Hey, I don’t want to make this call unilaterally because I believe it’s very important, because it goes to legal bias, [because] it could affect investigations.I need career professionals to look at this and tell me what I need to do."I don't think it was a close call.I think the notion that, “Oh, he just shouldn’t have recused,” I think you put most competent attorneys in a similar situation given his significant involvement in the campaign, and then tell them, “The DOJ is now going to investigate campaign-related matters,” I don't think most attorneys would look at that and say, “Oh, I shouldn't recuse."I think most of them look at that and say: “This is an easy call.I need to step away from this because I'm too close to it to be objective in the administration of justice."And he followed the standards, asked for advice and made a decision consistent with that.

You think he had any idea how angry, vituperative, unrelenting his friend Donald Trump was at this moment?

I think he should have been aware in the sense that—

Of what?

Of Trump's personality.That he would be potentially outraged.It was shocking to me that it was so public, because I obviously haven't seen that as much from the president of the United States.That's certainly a difference that most people I don't think were expecting.But the president obviously expects a very high degree of personal loyalty to him, and when that isn't there, we've seen that.We've seen his attitude toward people that aren’t loyal to him, that criticize him, that have different perspectives than he does.And I think Sessions probably should have been aware that there was a probability that the president would see this as disloyalty.

Why not just resign, let the president pick his own person and move on?

… I don't think him following legal process and ethical standards means he can't serve as the attorney general.I see him very much saying: “I want to do my job.I want to uphold the Constitution, maintain the rule of law."

And he serves at the pleasure of the president.This is the irony.It’s not “Why hasn't Sessions resigned?"It's “Why hasn’t Trump fired him?"If the president feels so strongly that Jeff Sessions cannot conduct the Department of Justice effectively, fairly and consistent with the president’s perspectives and agenda, why hasn’t he fired him?

How do you answer that question?

I believe that the president has been advised that firing Sessions would be a significant misstep.He’s also seen it’s not just the president’s perspectives on Sessions; it’s the whole confirmation process.Imagine we're in a situation where the president fires the attorney general and he fires [U.S. Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein.Now we have to have new appointments and confirmations.The idea of going to the Senate right now and saying, “We're going to confirm a new attorney general,” those are questions and processes that I don't think the administration wants to deal with right now, because the first question any Democratic senator is going to ask is: “Why did you fire Jeff Sessions?Why is he no longer there?What was it that he did wrong that required you to replace him?"And right now, I think the president’s only answer could be something along the lines of, “Well, I just didn't like him; I didn't want him there anymore,” because if you look in terms of the policy agenda, whether it’s immigration, law enforcement, generally on drug issues, things like that, Sessions has very much been carrying the president’s agenda.So the argument that he’s somehow been insubordinate or somehow done something, we’ll call it a firing for cause, doesn’t exist, and I think that makes it very, very difficult on the president to fire Sessions and then come in with somebody else and have to answer a lot of questions before the Senate.

There's a moment in Jim Comey’s book where he talks about that meeting at the Oval Office.[Adviser Jared] Kushner, Sessions and Comey are there.The president asks Kushner to leave, shoos Sessions out of the door, sits alone with Comey and says, “[National Security Adviser] Mike Flynn’s a good guy; give him a break,” or whatever he says to him.Comey leaves that room, shaken, he says; goes to the conference room of the attorney general and says to Jeff Sessions: “You can't leave me alone with the president.Do not leave me alone with the president anymore."… Explain to the extent that you can what kind of a pickle that puts Jeff Sessions in right there.

Well, I think, assuming that that's how that transpired, it puts him in an uncomfortable position, because he’s realizing that the independence of the rule of law is a value, is something that he cares about, and when you're seeing a situation where it looks very much like someone asking for a political favor in a prosecution, that's a non-starter.That is not a situation where anybody should say, “OK, sure."That would have put Comey in an uncomfortable position.And now you have the attorney general, who’s allegedly been notified that, “Hey, this is what happened; how do we deal with this going forward?"That is an unenviable position to be in for the attorney general.

But again, I think it points to the president’s differing perspectives on private practice and what happens here, because the problem is not saying, “Hey, he's a good guy,” or anything like that.It’s the fact that you're the president of the United States, and the Department of Justice answers to you, whereas …—Say that Trump did this in the private sector and said, “Here's a prosecutor prosecuting one of my friends”; I can go and say, “Hey, this is a good guy; he's a friend of mine; this is a guy that you can trust,” and the prosecutor can take that into consideration.But the prosecutor has no compulsion to do anything with it or otherwise listen.

In the context where the president is having that same conversation with the Department of Justice who works for him, that's a different story.

And it’s a different story because?

Well, because the president ultimately, if you say he's in charge of the entire executive branch under a sort of unitary executive theory, everybody in the Department of Justice very much works for him, so his ability to hire, fire, deal with that is very significant.Anytime you have someone in what amounts to an employment context, that changes the game significantly.It’s not as if the Department of Justice is its own co-equal branch of government.That's not how the Constitution sets it up.Because he’s ultimately in charge of the Department of Justice, that creates some real problems if, indeed, the president is asking for, or asked for, what amounts to political favors.

Meanwhile, you've got Trump, as you say, politicizing, pushing for actions to take place, threatening to fire both Sessions and Comey at some moments, insisting that Sessions un-recuse himself at some points; Fox News, the tweet fests, all of it happening.Talk about a politicized environment there right around the time Comey’s about to be fired.

Well, I think that's absolutely right.What we saw was a situation where there was a heavy degree of: “Sessions, why are you not here?Why are you not coming out and stopping this?"But what Trump did—and he’s tactically masterful in some of this—you had a situation where a lot of Americans, particularly a lot of Republicans, had looked at that tarmac meeting and looked at the information that had come out to that point, and it just didn't look good.It didn't look good at all, and you're getting this sense of, “Well, Clinton was reckless with these emails,” and most Americans are looking at that and saying: “Well, if you're telling us that, what's happening?Why isn't she being prosecuted?What's going on?"

Then Trump comes in and affirms that and says: “Why not?What's going on?"That left everybody else to say: “Oh, well, we've got bias in the Department of Justice.This is very much biased for the powerful Democrat, very biased against people like Trump."So Trump used that to basically say: “Hey, they're looking into this, but this is not an open process.This is a Democratic, subversive thing."

It ignored the fact that there were a lot of Republicans involved, mostly Republicans, in fact.But at that point, I think the train had left the station in creating and eroding the footing of the Department of Justice as an independent legal entity, and once that had happened—and it wasn't just building on that.It goes even further back.When I first heard that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, I thought that was crazy.I thought that was sort of conspiratorial in nature, that somebody would even put that out there.

We get an IG [Inspector General] report saying, “No, that actually happened."And yes, this is not Department of Justice, but it’s undermining trust in government.It’s undermining this notion that government serves everybody and supporting the notion that it’s politicized.

I truthfully believe that that carried over into the situation with the Clinton email servers.It compounded there, and then ultimately that inertia has carried through today, where the arguments have continually been—and Trump has continued to use this—that this is a politicized process.“This is liberals, Democrats out to get me because they hate me,” not, “This is the process that we undertake as a matter of law.There's nothing to worry about here."

And if somebody was going to come after me, and I felt that it was wrong, eroding their credibility is something that is definitely a legal tactic, definitely something that one could do.

Of course one hopes the president of the United States would not erode the trust in the institutions. …

I think we have to be careful.If we look at [former Deputy FBI Director] Andrew McCabe and potentially here with James Comey and say, “These may have been very bad actors at times,” that doesn’t apply to the entire Department of Justice.I think that that's really easy for people, whether it’s cable news pundits and other folks, to say, “Well, the fact that we have evidence that some people made impermissible or bad political decisions in the application of justice doesn’t mean that thousands of other people are necessarily the same."

I agree with the sentiment that we shouldn’t erode a vital institution like the Department of Justice because of those bad actors.But we absolutely need to address those bad actors.We absolutely need to take them out of that process.

Well, this explains, in some ways, the effort of the Rosenstein memo when Trump comes back from Bedminster, [N.J., and the Trump National Golf Club], and says, “I want to fire him,” and [White House Counsel Donald] McGahn says: “You can't fire him based on what you and [senior policy adviser] Stephen Miller wrote up.Let’s get the Justice Department involved; let’s get Attorney General Sessions over here; let's get Rod Rosenstein over here, and let's—” … And that’s what everybody says is the cause of his firing, at least for a day or so.

Well, the challenge is that the wheels of justice turn slowly in a 24-hour news cycle, so there's constant demand for action for something that happened.Legal processes are slow.I mean, that's what we're seeing with the IG’s report on the happenings around the Clinton email server situation.We're talking about a year to investigate that, to look at it thoroughly and to have a report that only then could be used to take further action, which would take even longer.And people don’t like waiting.They don’t like the notion that these things take time.

The same thing with the investigation into Russia's interference into the campaign.As an American, I want to know what exactly happened, who was involved and how can we prevent that sort of thing in the future.Frankly, it has nothing to do with the president in the sense that I don’t have a desire to see him prosecuted or not.In fact, I think prosecuting the president of the United States at some point when he leaves office or forcing him out creates another layer of complication and upheaval.

I care that the process is followed; that we look at it, we investigate it, we know what happened, and if people broke laws, they're prosecuted for it.That's all this is, but the news cycle needs something to happen constantly, and obviously the president likes things to happen constantly, too.

… In the case of firing Comey, we introduced the law of unintended consequences, which is it all blows up.Rosenstein is unhappy about his memo being used as the casus belli [literally, cause of war; in law, an event giving rise to or justifying war ], or whatever it is, and he appoints a special prosecutor, and that special prosecutor is the formidable Robert Mueller III.

I think that, again, in terms of the appointment of a special counsel, many members of Congress don’t understand that there are standards for the appointment of a special counsel that matter.This is not a situation where whenever anybody wants one, they can just appoint a special counsel. If that were the case, we would have special counsels all over the place.There are certain standards that basically mean the Department of Justice itself, as an entity, can't effectively look into the matter objectively.There are specific standards, but that's when you're appointing a special counsel.

If you look at that appointment letter that Rosenstein put out, it very clearly talks about here's the scope; here's what is permissible; this is where this thing should be.Most people don’t read official documents and letters, but the idea that we would give a special prosecutor power to look into something and then in looking into that thing they come across additional crimes that were committed, they should absolutely be able to refer those out.The notion that some crimes we don’t look at or some crimes we don’t care about because they're not any crime we're looking for is bizarre and not consistent with the rule of law.

We should want criminal wrongdoing to be found out and prosecuted.That's one of the first stages at which I noticed something was off here, was the notion of people saying, “Well, if it’s not just about Russia or just about the campaign, that's not something that a special prosecutor should be able to either prosecute themselves or refer out."The question for me is, why?If criminal acts are being perpetrated and we have credible information that they are, we need to prosecute them.That's how the rule of law should work.That may not be politically in my interest or anyone else’s, but it does mean that we're upholding the rule of law.And that's more important than political preferences.

When Trump hears that Mueller's been appointed, that a special prosecutor has been appointed, it happens that Jeff Sessions is in the Oval Office when the phone call comes to McGahn, who says it out loud.The president is fierce and angry at Attorney General Sessions.Tell me that story.You know Sessions well enough to know, how did that all go for him, do you think?

Well, anytime your boss is yelling at you and blaming you for something that he sees as a net negative, that's tough for any employee.I think the situation that puzzles me again and again is if this is a matter of legal process, if this is a matter of applying the rule of law and taking the right process steps, the president shouldn’t be concerned.If this is a witch hunt and the president has done nothing wrong, and there's no related criminal activity, this shouldn't matter, because the notion that whether it was Sessions doing it or—the truth is, if Sessions had not recused himself, I very much expect that Sessions would have engaged in the same way, because he respects the rule of law and believes in the legal process.

So why is he acting so fiercely?Why go after Jeff Sessions of all people?

I'd love to know the answer to that.I really would, because if I'm in his shoes, I realize, hey, Russia may have done some—no, Russia did do some things related to the election.But I didn't talk to him.“I wasn’t trying to coordinate, wasn't trying to do anything other than run for office.And hey, maybe they helped me or helped Clinton or whoever.Doesn’t matter."Then let the process work out; let it move down.

But if, on the other hand, I'm concerned that this thing may open up doors I want to remain shut, then I'd probably be a little more upset, and I think that's why the president continually bringing this back up, trying to say: “Well, this is a witch hunt.This is nothing."Why?If it’s nothing, then why do you keep bringing it back up?Because I think the president, in many respects, makes it a thing because he keeps bringing it up.Just simply allowing it to proceed and go down the process may very well end up in his exoneration in that they, the Russians were involved; it did work out favorably for you, but you didn't do anything.

I think in protesting and constantly going after the Department of Justice, one, it doesn't look good for him, but it also undermines the Department of Justice.That's my biggest concern here, is that the Department of Justice matters.This is a legal entity that in its operation can move to take away your life, your liberty, your freedom based on the powers that it possesses, and we have to have confidence in that institution.There are other agencies where it may not impact me.Maybe the Department of Agriculture I don’t have a direct connection to.This one everybody does, because everybody’s freedom could be placed in jeopardy by running afoul of many federal laws.

So having people in positions that are that powerful whom we trust and who we believe will be fair and independent is absolutely critical.And the president continually eroding that as maybe a legal strategy, I think is dangerous and even at times irresponsible.

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