Without a doubt, this revelation moves the Trump White House closer and closer to a charge of obstruction of justice.
Trump wanted an Attorney General who would "protect" him.
Why would an innocent person need to be protected?
From The New York Times:
President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.
Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.
The report goes on to say that just days before FBI Director James Comey was fired, aides for Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked congressional staffers if they had dirt on Comey. Clearly, there was a thought to try and smear the FBI director.
The extremely-nonpartisan Associated Press has now corroborated this story.
Not to be heavyhanded but it bears repeating - the Attorney General does not serve to protect the president.
It is the Attorney General's job to enforce the laws of the United States.
There's irony in Trump's call for his own "Roy Cohn" given Trump's own disloyalty to the infamous attorney once he was diagnosed with AIDS.
NYT today quotes Trump as saying "where is my Roy Cohn?" to lament what he sees as his lack of loyal protectors. But @mckaycoppins reported in 2016 that Trump cut ties with Roy Cohn when he found out Cohn was HIV-positive (https://t.co/jjWMBEL8le): pic.twitter.com/KXdHNI9MQV— Taniel (@Taniel) January 5, 2018
Trump, regarding Sessions, “Where’s my Roy Cohn.”— S B Hammel (@lasteve423) January 5, 2018
Roy Cohn, Donald? You mean the evil engineer of the fifties witch hunt against Russian influence in our government? (So ironic)
Your homosexual best friend whom you abandoned after his AIDS diagnosis? That Roy Cohn?
For the straights: Roy Cohn was a self-hating gay who helped McCarthy implement McCarthyism. Later he became Trump's lawyer and mentor until Trump found our he had AIDS and dumped him.— Grant (@NotSoNiceville) January 5, 2018
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