(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump renewed his criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, blaming Justice Department indictments against two Republican lawmakers for endangering their seats in the November elections.
“Good job Jeff,” Trump said in a tweet, followed by another saying that “Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now.”
Prosecutors last month charged California Representative Duncan Hunter with corruption for misusing campaign money and New York Representative Christopher Collins with insider trading. The two men were Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress, and the indictments are fodder for Democrats heading into Nov. 6 elections that may give them control of the House.
“Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time,” Trump said in his tweet.
Both congressmen have pleaded not guilty in their cases. Frances Townsend, a former federal prosecutor who was a homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser to President George W. Bush, criticized Trump in a tweet of her own.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Sessions in private and in public for recusing himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In an Oval Office interview last week with Bloomberg News, Trump declined to say whether he’d keep Sessions in his job after the election. The president blasted Sessions for failing to rein in what he called an “illegal investigation” by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump and his campaign aides colluded with Russians in the 2016 election.
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