President Trump says he would never have hired Jeff Sessions as his attorney general if he had known Sessions was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. In a New York Times interview, Trump makes it clear that he feels he has been shabbily treated by Sessions, who was the first senator to support his candidacy. "Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president," Trump said, referring to himself in the third person. "If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you,'" Trump said. "It's extremely unfair—and that's a mild word—to the president."
Sources tell CNN that Sessions has no intention of resigning after Trump's remarks. In the wide-ranging NYT interview, Trump said he has no regrets about firing FBI chief James Comey. "I did a great thing for the American people," he said. He said that weeks before his inauguration, Comey told him about a dossier full of allegations against him, in a move that Trump now believes was an attempt to show he had leverage. Trump also accused special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation, of having "many" conflicts of interest. Asked about his recently disclosed second conversation with Vladimir Putin, Trump said they had discussed adoption, noting that it was the same subject that came up in Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer last year. (More Jeff Sessions stories.)