(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s aides are watching for two key encounters this week to see if Attorney General Jeff Sessions has finally extricated himself from the danger of being fired, in part by ousting the former No. 2 official at the FBI, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Sessions’s standing improved after his Friday night firing of Andrew McCabe, who the president and some Republicans have accused of anti-Trump bias. Top White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence and Chief of Staff John Kelly, have been protective of Sessions, going out of their way to make Sessions feel appreciated amid frequent criticism from Trump, the people said.
The attorney general’s fate has been up in air for months, and questions resurfaced over the weekend as the president unleashed a string of tweets calling Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe a “witch hunt.” That renewed concern that Trump might install a new attorney general who can fire Mueller.
Trump and Sessions are scheduled to appear together on Monday for an event in New Hampshire on opioid addiction, although they flew there separately and some aides remained worried about how the president will treat Sessions in person. The two will also participate in a roundtable Tuesday at the White House on immigration, providing a fresh glimpse into their tense, and at times tumultuous, relationship.
The president has repeatedly and publicly berated Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe, saying he wouldn’t have appointed Sessions if he’d had known Sessions would step away from it.
Trump can’t fire Mueller directly, but he could replace Sessions with someone who would. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, has told associates he’d be willing to lead the Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said in January.
Sessions made the decision to fire McCabe after the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended that he be dismissed for not being forthcoming about authorizing discussions with a reporter about a pending investigation. Sessions said he relied on internal assessments that McCabe lacked candor on multiple occasions.
McCabe said the firing on Friday night, two days before he was to retire, was an effort by the president and his allies to undermine Mueller’s investigation. Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who’s representing McCabe, said the efforts to investigate and eventually fire McCabe came after disclosures that McCabe would be a “corroborating witness” against the president.
In a series of posts over the weekend, Trump criticized Mueller by name on Twitter for the first time, saying his investigation is corrupted by political bias.
‘Hardened Democrats’
“Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair?’’ Trump tweeted earlier Sunday, even though Mueller is a Republican. “And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!’’
On Sunday evening, White House lawyer Ty Cobb issued a statement saying Trump “is not considering or discussing the firing” of Mueller. But Trump already had made clear his growing impatience at the special counsel and his probe. He continued to do that on Monday morning, saying in a tweet: “A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”
In a statement Saturday, Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, said “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier.’’
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