U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions Resigns
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]C[/dropcap]onfirming building rumors, Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned suddenly today at the request of President Donald Trump. A replacement Attorney General has also been named by President Trump via a tweet.
….We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well! A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018
In a letter addressed to President Trump, Session wrote that he was “honored to serve as Attorney General” adding that he had “worked to implement the law enforcement agenda based on the rule of law that formed a central part of your campaign for the presidency.”
The resignation will come as a blessing to many, but most notably to people in the cannabis industry. Sessions terminated the Cole Memo last January, which protected states with legal cannabis from federal authorities. Sessions also said “good people don’t smoke marijuana,” and he also referred to the Ku Klux Klan, saying “I thought those guys were okay until I learned they smoked pot.”
Sessions was the first U.S. senator to endorse President Trump, but the relationship quickly went downhill almost immediately. President Trump called Sessions an assortment of names including “Mr. Magoo” and “mentally retarded,” according to a book written by Bob Woodward. But most sources say that most of the tension between President Trump and Sessions revolved around the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself in Aug. 2017 from an inquiry on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
President Trump has already tweeted that Matthew G. Whitaker will serve as acting U.S. Attorney General. Whitaker had been serving as Session’s chief of staff before being appointed as acting Attorney General.
