The American public’s patience with Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is wearing thin.

Unlike some Trump supporters, I and many others see no sunny side to his being attorney general (AG) any longer.

For background material see my tag Jeff Sessions, including George True’s guest posts:

Guest post: a reader’s perspective on the Deep State and Mueller investigation (April 15, George True)

Guest post: a reader’s perspective on Jeff Sessions’s priorities (George True, April 20 and Rosenstein’s presidential cufflinks)

Guest post: what to make of Jeff Sessions, the DOJ and upcoming IG report? (May 17)

Politically blind Sessions supporters say that he would not be there if President Trump did not want him to be.

WRONG!

The Senate told Trump last year that a) they would not appoint another AG and b) they would not go into recess for the specific purpose of preventing Trump from appointing a replacement.

A lot of these same people said that HR McMaster was doing a wonderful job, too. For months on end, I read — paraphrased — ‘HR McMaster wouldn’t be there if the President didn’t want him to be’.

FALSE!

It took a while for Trump to sack McMaster, but once Trump built up a head of steam about the three-star general, that was it.

I have just completed a five-part series for Orphans of Liberty called the McMaster Chronicles. I would strongly suggest that Sessions fans read the series, which will take a while:

Trump’s reshuffle: the McMaster Chronicles — Part 1

Trump’s reshuffle: the McMaster Chronicles — Part 2

Trump’s reshuffle: the McMaster Chronicles — Part 3

Trump’s reshuffle: the McMaster Chronicles — Part 4

Trump’s reshuffle: the McMaster Chronicles — Part 5 (the end)

HR McMaster was a globalist from the start. He refused to call out Islamicist terrorism because, to him, religious people do not commit it. He tried to get President Trump not to use the term but failed. He renewed chief unmasker Susan Rice’s security clearance. He sacked Trump loyalists. He told a security conference in Berlin that there was Russian collusion.

That last point was the straw that broke the camel’s back. For months, I had been hoping McMaster would go, and, suddenly, all because of the brief mention of Russian interference in Berlin, that was it. Trump was furious.

And, no, McMaster did not resign. Trump arranged for John Bolton to replace him and then gave McMaster the news.

Trump also purposely used mainstream media reports as a rationale to replace McMaster. Those reports included the same ‘anonymous sources’ that McMaster and Sessions supporters so loathe.

I’m very sorry about McMaster’s father’s recent death (covered in Part 5), but the general was not the right person for the job.

The McMaster Chronicles illustrate what is highly likely to happen to Jeff Sessions.

And now, Joe diGenova, an attorney close to President Trump, says that Sessions’s days are numbered.

PJ Media has the May 16 story, excerpted below (emphases mine):

Attorney Joe diGenova predicted that both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ days are numbered at the Department of Justice during a telephone interview with Newsmax’s Howie Carr Wednesday. DiGenova’s claim came after the New York Times published a report titled “Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation”. The report has been interpreted by many as an attempt by sources within the “Deep State” to cushion the blow of the imminent DOJ inspector general report, which is expected to be explosive.

In March, President Trump considered adding diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing to his legal team, but conflicts of interest reportedly prevented him from hiring them. The attorney is still in contact with Trump, and told Carr that “the president has had it up to his scuppers with these clowns.”

Like a number of other concerned Trump supporters, diGenova is certain that a coup d’état has been underway for some time:

DiGenova explained that the whole point of the Comey/Clapper/Brennan operation was to ruin Trump’s presidential bid and if that failed, to ruin his presidency. He expressed frustration that Sessions has been unable to see through what he called “a coup d’etat.”

“If he can’t see that, he’s not competent to be attorney general!” he exclaimed. “He hasn’t recused himself from understanding that a presidency is being assaulted illegitimately by Mueller and by current and former people in the FBI and the intelligence community.”

DiGenova warned that Sessions is on thin ice with the president and his days may be numbered. “If it comes out that Jeff Sessions has not authorized a grand jury into all those unmaskings, all those leaks, … and Ben Rhodes and John Brennan and James Clapper have not been authorized for subpoenas, … if he has not authorized that, he’s going to be fired,” he predicted.

The reason he knew that, DiGenova said, was that both Rosenstein and Sessions had been to the White House twice in the past two weeks to meet with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and they were told their jobs were “not secure.”

“The president has had it up to his scuppers with these clowns and he has every right in the world to be furious with the incompetence of the Department of Justice under Rosenstein and Sessions,” diGenova explained, adding, “I have been told that by people who know.”

Under the current circumstances, Sessions could be replaced in one of two ways. Trump could make it so uncomfortable for him to remain as AG that he resigns. Alternatively, Trump could make a lateral move by sacking Sessions and putting the current EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) head Scott Pruitt into that position.

Vox, not a pro-Trump site by any means, had an article about the latter possibility on April 6. Excerpts follow:

The background is that Trump has been positively furious with Sessions since he recused himself from handling the Russia investigation in March 2017. The probe has since been overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Robert Mueller to take charge of it in May …

But Sessions hasn’t taken the bait and has defiantly refused to quit …

Yet there is one alternative here — albeit a legally dubious and sure-to-be-controversial one. In his administration, Trump has frequently used a law called the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to circumvent the usual line of succession in agencies. The law allows the president to temporarily fill an agency vacancy — so long as the new appointee was already confirmed by the Senate for a different position.

This is how Trump put Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and put a Defense Department official in charge of the Department of Veterans Affairs. (There is some legal ambiguity about whether Trump even can use the Vacancies Act to replace someone he fired rather than someone who resigned, but Trump decided to try to use it to replace fired VA Secretary David Shulkin anyway.)

Now, an appointment under the Vacancies Reform Act would be temporary — the appointee can only serve for 210 days. But a whole lot can happen in 210 days, at what seems to be a crucial period for Mueller’s investigation.

Even better news is that Scott Pruitt might well be interested in the AG job:

Politico’s Andrew Restuccia reported that Pruitt “has told friends and associates that he’s interested in becoming attorney general, according to three people familiar with the internal discussions.” (He added, “It’s unclear whether Pruitt would be on the shortlist for the position.”) Then, hours later, both Reuters and Bloomberg independently confirmed the report that Pruitt has been telling others he was interested in the attorney general job.

The sourcing and speedy corroborations from other outlets here suggest that Pruitt’s allies were deliberately putting out a message — to Trump. The message was that if Trump wanted to finally rid himself of Sessions, Pruitt would be positively eager to step in and replace him.

What Pruitt would do about the Mueller investigation is, of course, not explicitly stated in these reports, though the wink-wink implication seems to be that he’d handle it in a way Trump would prefer.

Vox also stated that moving Pruitt into the AG slot would also allay the concerns of conservatives wary of moving Sessions out.

To be fair, Vox did include the Trump tweets against ‘fake news’, but the article says this has happened before. It didn’t mention McMaster — Sarah Sanders came to his defence — but the same principle is in play.

Joe diGenova was nearly hired using this same Trump technique:

On March 11, he tweeted that he was “VERY happy” with his legal team and that a New York Times report that he’d add another lawyer was “false.” However, just eight days later, he announced he did in fact plan to hire another lawyer, Joseph diGenova, and a few days after that, his lead personal lawyer, John Dowd, exited the team. (DiGenova’s hiring fell through in the end.)

Furthermore, Trump has been known to float a great many possible personnel changes in conversations with friends and allies — a few of which end up happening, most of which don’t.

Scott Pruitt has not had an easy time at the EPA, which is filled with holdovers who are trying to make his life a misery whilst he is trying to reform the agency. That could work either for or against him in a lateral move.

Regardless …

Sessions is going to be out one way or another as soon as Trump can arrange it.