Rachel Maddow Wonders: Would We Really Be Better Off Without Jeff Sessions?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is coming under fire for allegedly lying under oath about his knowledge of meetings between Trump campaign associates and Russian representatives. And President Donald Trump is steamed at him again, this time ostensibly for not investigating Hillary Clinton and various other Democrats.

But the American people might be better off with Sessions right where he is at the head of the Justice Department, Rachel Maddow argued on Friday night. Because if Trump does force him out of office, or he resigns, that opens the door to a new attorney general who hasn’t recused himself from the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The MSNBC host counts Trump’s latest slam against Sessions as the president’s fourth round of attacks on him. Regardless of what Trump might specifically criticize, Maddow said she suspects the key issue is always that Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe and that the president would like to take the driver’s seat on that investigation with the help of a more compliant attorney general.

“If Trump fires him, he will replace Sessions with somebody not recused from overseeing the Russian investigation,” Maddow said. And what would Trump want that new person to do? she wondered.

“If you think the Russia attack [on the U.S. election] and the possibility that the Trump campaign was in on it is a serious national security matter for this country, a serious political crisis for this country, what’s worse: having an attorney general of the United States, a serving attorney general, who is up to his neck in that scandal ... or not having that attorney general, who is up to his neck in that scandal?”

“If you’re Congress and you want to go after the bad actors in this scandal, should you go after Jeff Sessions? Or is Jeff Sessions the one person you absolutely should not go after under any circumstances ... ’cause he needs to stay?”

Check out the case Maddow makes in the video above.