Sessions was very unfair to me, Russia case is 'made-up junk': Trump

Trump slammed Sessions for telling the probe panel that he met no Russian during the campaign

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ANI New York
Last Updated : Jul 20 2017 | 11:22 AM IST

Hitting out at Jeff Sessions for recusing himself over matters related to the 2016 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump said he would not have chosen Sessions to be his Attorney General had he known this would happen.

In a 50-minute interview with The New York Times, Trump rebuked the nation's top law enforcement official.

"Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the President. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I'm not going to take you.' It's extremely unfair -- and that's a mild word -- to the President," the President said.

Trump further tore into Sessions for telling the Senate judiciary committee that he had not met with any Russians during the campaign, as it was later revealed he had met with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US, at least two times.

However, Sessions had later proceeded to amend his testimony.

"Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers. He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren't," he said.

Trump also stated that former FBI Director James Comey had handed him a dossier with the allegations about himself and Russia prior to his inauguration, in an attempt to have leverage over him.

"In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there. When he brought it to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I didn't think about any of it. I just thought about man, this is such a phony deal," Trump said.

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First Published: Jul 20 2017 | 11:15 AM IST

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