President Donald Trump drew a sharp rebuttal from his attorney
general on Thursday after he gave a scathing assessment of Jeff
Sessions as being unable to take control of the Justice
Department..
Sessions, in a rare rebuttal to Trump, issued a statement defending
the integrity of his department.
“I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn
in,” he said. “… While I am attorney general, the actions of the
Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political
considerations.”
Trump intensified his criticism of the Justice Department in a Fox
News interview aired on Thursday as the White House grappled to
respond to Tuesday’s conviction of former Trump campaign
chairman Paul Manafort on multiple fraud counts and guilty plea by
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that implicated
the president.
The Republican president reprised a litany of complaints about the
Justice Department and the FBI, attacking both without providing
evidence they had treated him and his supporters unfairly.
Trump also renewed his criticism of Sessions, blaming him for
what he called corruption at the Justice Department.
“I put in an attorney general who never took control of the Justice
Department,” Trump said.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed a slight drop in support among
Republicans for Trump in the wake of the Manafort conviction and
the Cohen plea.
The poll, conducted from Tuesday evening to Thursday, found that
78 percent of Republicans approved of Trump, down from 81
percent in a seven-day poll that ended on Monday.
Among Democrats, 11 percent said they approved of Trump, down
from 15 percent in the earlier poll.
Overall, 37 percent of adults said they approved of Trump’s
performance in office – down from 43 percent in the earlier poll.
Trump’s approval numbers have been relatively stable since he
took office, when compared with his predecessors, and his
popularity has not wavered much among Republicans.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout
the United States. It gathered responses from 1,688 American
adults, including 704 Democrats and 587 Republicans. It has a
credibility interval, a measure of the poll’s precision, of 3
percentage points for the entire sample, 4 points for the
Democrats and 5 points for the Republicans.
Source: vanguardngr.com
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