Washington: US President Donald Trump said that he never would have appointed Attorney-General Jeff Sessions had he known Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision "very unfair to the President."
In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Trump complained that Sessions' decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. "Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else," Trump said.
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Trump and Putin's undisclosed meeting
Their first highly publicised meeting at G20 went for over two hours, it has now been revealed that the US and Russian presidents met again without a US translator, breaching security protocol.
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the US President also accused James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Trump criticised both the acting FBI director who has been filling in since Comey's dismissal and the deputy attorney-general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year's election.
Trump said Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia. Trump never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mueller, nor would he outline circumstances under which he might do so. But he left open the possibility as he expressed deep grievance over an investigation that has taken a political toll in the six months since he took office.
Asked if Mueller's investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family's finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Trump said, "I would say yes." He would not say what he would do about it. "I think that's a violation. Look, this is about Russia."
While the interview touched on an array of issues, including health care, foreign affairs and politics, the investigation dominated the conversation. He said that as far as he knew, he was not under investigation himself, despite reports that Mueller is looking at whether the president obstructed justice by firing Comey.
"I don't think we're under investigation," he said. "I'm not under investigation. For what? I didn't do anything wrong."
Describing a newly disclosed informal conversation he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner of world leaders in Germany this month, Trump said they talked for about 15 minutes, mostly about "pleasantries." But Trump did say that they talked "about adoption." Putin banned American adoptions of Russian children in 2012 after the US enacted sanctions on Russians accused of human rights abuses, an issue that remains a sore point in relations with Moscow.
![President Donald Trump holds up a Channellock locking plier during a "Made in America," roundtable event in the White House.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170723160609im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/f/j/b/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfj4c.png/1500561294169.jpg)
Trump acknowledged that it was "interesting" that adoptions came up since his son, Donald Trump jnr, said that was the topic of a meeting he had with several Russians with ties to the Kremlin during last year's campaign. Even though emails show that the session had been set up to pass along incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, the President said he did not need such material from Russia about Clinton last year because he already had more than enough.
Trump's pique at Sessions seemed fresh even months after the Attorney-General's recusal. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump's candidacy and was rewarded with a key Cabinet slot, but has been more distant from the President lately.
![Trump said Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation was "very unfair to the President."](http://web.archive.org./web/20170723160609im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/e/y/5/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfj4c.png/1500579797058.jpg)
"Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president," he added. "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."
Trump also faulted Sessions for his testimony during Senate confirmation hearings when Sessions said he had not had "communications with the Russians" even though he had met at least twice with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak. "Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers," Mr Trump said. "He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren't."
![Donald Trump warned special counsel Robert Mueller's office against delving into matters too far afield from Russia.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170723160609im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/x/q/y/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfj4c.png/1500579797153.jpg)
A spokesman for Sessions declined to comment.
Trump added a new allegation against Comey, whose dismissal has become a central issue for critics who said it amounted to an attempt to obstruct the investigation into Russian meddling in the election and any possible collusion with Trump's team.
![Trump said he believed Comey told him about the dossier to make clear he had something to hold over him.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170723160609im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/a/7/t/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfj4c.png/1500561294169.jpg)
Trump recalled that a little more than two weeks before his inauguration, Comey and other intelligence officials briefed him at Trump Tower on Russian meddling. Comey afterward pulled Trump aside and told him about a dossier that had been assembled by a former British spy filled with salacious allegations against the incoming president, including supposed sexual escapades in Moscow. The FBI has not corroborated the most sensational assertions in the dossier.
In the interview, Trump said he believed Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over him. "In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there," Mr Trump said.
![President Donald Trump reaches to shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170723160609im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/8/3/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfj4c.png/1500561294169.jpg)
As leverage? "Yeah, I think so," Trump said, "In retrospect."
Trump dismissed the assertions in the dossier: "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."
![Donald Trump junior.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170723160609im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/8/l/9/x/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfj4c.png/1500561294169.jpg)
Comey declined to comment.
But Comey and other intelligence officials decided it was best for him to raise the subject with Trump alone because he was going to remain as FBI director. Comey testified before Congress that he disclosed the details of the dossier to Trump because he thought that the media would soon be publishing details from it and that Trump had a right to know what information was out there about him. A two-page summary about the dossier was widely reported the week before Trump's inauguration.
Trump rebutted Comey's claim that in a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office on February 14, the president asked him to end the investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Comey testified before Congress that Trump kicked the vice-president, attorney-general and several other senior administration officials out of the room before having the discussion with Comey.
"I don't remember even talking to him about any of this stuff," Trump said. "He said I asked people to go. Look, you look at his testimony. His testimony is loaded up with lies, OK.?"
In his first description of his dinnertime conversation with Putin at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, Trump played down its significance. He said his wife, Melania, was seated next to Putin at the other end of a table filled with world leaders.
"The meal was going toward dessert," he said. "I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption."
He noted the adoption issue came up in the June 2016 meeting between his son and Russian visitors. "I actually talked about Russian adoption with him," he said, meaning Putin. "Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don (Donald Trump jnr) had in that meeting."
But the President repeated that he did not know about his son's meeting at the time and added that he did not need the Russians to provide damaging information about Clinton.
"There wasn't much I could say about Hillary Clinton that was worse than what I was already saying," he said. "Unless somebody said that she shot somebody in the back, there wasn't much I could add to my repertoire."
New York Times