WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against President Trump’s recent attack on him — namely that Mr. Sessions never took control of the Justice Department — and said on Thursday that he would not be influenced by politics in the job.
“While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” Mr. Sessions said in a rare public statement.
The president has long expressed regret over naming Mr. Sessions to be attorney general because he suggested Mr. Sessions failed to protect him by recusing himself from the government’s continuing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and any possible coordination with members of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
“I put in an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with “Fox & Friends” recorded on Wednesday and aired on Thursday morning. “Jeff Sessions never took control of the Justice Department and it’s a sort of an incredible thing.”
The president later asked: “What kind of man is this.”
Mr. Sessions appeared to answer that question: “I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action,” he said in the statement.
Mr. Trump said the only reason he gave Mr. Sessions the job was because he had been an early prominent supporter of his presidential campaign. “I felt loyalty,” Mr. Trump said.
If the battle lines were not previously drawn, they were now.
Mr. Sessions stated his unwavering commitment to nation’s laws and his support for the federal investigators and prosecutors who enforce them. By contrast, Mr. Trump expressed what he found most valuable — loyalty — and how he thought one of the key tools for law enforcement, “flipping” and cooperating with federal prosecutors, “almost ought to be outlawed.”
Mr. Trump’s response this week to learning that two of his former aides were guilty of defrauding the federal government has helped paint a picture of his views on law and loyalty. One aide, his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of tax and bank fraud on Tuesday. Mr. Trump said he was “brave,” because he chose to go to trial instead of cooperating with the government. And the other aide, the president’s longtime personal attorney Michael D. Cohen, who was once so loyal to the president that he said he would take a bullet for him, was in Mr. Trump’s view a bad lawyer who broke under pressure.
“It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Cohen’s deal with the government. Mr. Trump said the campaign finance crimes Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to were “tiny ones,” or “not even crimes.”
Mr. Trump said the years in prison that Mr. Cohen faces were too daunting, and “in all fairness to him, most people are going to” take a plea bargain. Mr. Trump added, “I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff.”
One of Mr. Trump’s longtime friends, David J. Pecker, was given immunity by federal prosecutors in exchange for providing information about Mr. Cohen’s campaign finance crimes and Mr. Trump’s role in them, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed on Thursday.
Flipping, or striking a plea bargain with prosecutors, is one of the most commonly used tactics in the federal justice system.
Matt Axelrod, a former federal prosecutor who is currently practicing as a white collar defense attorney at Linklaters Law Firm, called it a “fundamental building block” of federal prosecutions.
“Prosecutors use cooperators to work their way up the organizational hierarchy,” Mr. Axelrod said. “Without cooperators, prosecutors are often left with a case against just the worker bees, not the bosses.”
Or, as Mr. Trump said, “They flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go.”