Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly suggested resigning over his rift with President Donald Trump, according to multiple outlets.
The revelation follows a New York Times report on Monday describing Trump’s growing frustration with his attorney general, whom the president reportedly blames for the escalation of an FBI probe into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Tuesday confirmed an earlier ABC report about Sessions floating the possibility of resigning.
“Confirmed that Sessions at one point told the president, amid tensions NYT reported last night, that he needed room to do his job and did not need to remain [in] it if the president didn’t want him there,” Haberman tweeted Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, a Justice Department spokeswoman told CNN that Sessions is not stepping down.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to answer a question earlier in the day about whether Trump still has confidence in the attorney general.
“I don’t have a comment on that,” Spicer told reporters during his daily briefing, when asked to describe the president’s confidence in Sessions. Pressed further, Spicer said, “I have not had that discussion with [Trump], and if I haven’t had a discussion about a subject, I tend not to speak about it.”
On Tuesday, Trump also tweeted his frustration with the Justice Department’s adjustments to his first travel ban ― changes that were aimed at trying to convince federal judges to uphold the ban. Trump had, of course, approved those changes when he signed the revised executive order.
In March, Sessions formally recused himself from the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he had held at least two meetings with Russia’s ambassador during the presidential campaign and then failed to disclose those meetings to senators during his confirmation process.
Spicer’s “no comment” set off a buzz in Washington partly because the last time he was asked whether Trump had “confidence” in an administration official, that person was James Comey, now the former FBI director. A week after Spicer said the president had “confidence in the director,” Trump fired Comey.
Comey is set to testify before the Senate on Thursday about his conversations with Trump.