For Sessions, Trump's constant attacks may define his legacy

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has vigorously pushed President Donald Trump's agenda at the Justice Department, and before that, spent 20 years championing conservative causes in the Senate.

Yet as Sessions enters what may be the final stretch of his Cabinet tenure, those efforts are at risk of being eclipsed by his boss' frequent verbal attacks that have made Sessions seem like a presidential punching bag. It's a role he never asked for, though perhaps could have anticipated.

The steady diatribes, most recently a tweet excoriating Sessions for the federal indictments of two Republican congressmen, reflect Trump's outrage over the special counsel's Russia investigation. They are all the more striking because Sessions is the Trump agency leader most clearly aligned with Trump's values.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions waits to speak at the dedication for the United States Courthouse for the Southern District of Alabama in Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Sept. 7, 2018. (AP PhotoDan Anderson)

Sessions' allies say his treatment by Trump is overshadowing the attorney general's work on violent crime, illegal immigration and opioid addiction, and clouding a legacy of achievement that in other times would be more broadly cheered in conservative circles.

"There are folks that ask me constantly, 'What's wrong with Sessions?'" said former Cincinnati mayor Ken Blackwell, a longtime friend. The drumbeat of criticism is "eroding what otherwise would be a very respectable portfolio," he said.

"The punches that he throws in Sessions' direction are landing and they're distorting the track record," Blackwell added, "and they're having people start to question not just his loyalty to the president but his competency — when his record is a very successful record and could be compared to any other Cabinet secretary."

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., left, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, center, and U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., react at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the United States Courthouse for the Southern District of Alabama Friday, Sept. 7, 2018, in Mobile, Ala. (AP PhotoDan Anderson)

Sessions has, for the most part, absorbed the blows quietly while marching through a tough-on-crime agenda. He has encouraged more aggressive marijuana enforcement, directed prosecutors to bring the most serious charges they can prove, announced a zero-tolerance policy for immigrants crossing the border illegally and targeted the MS-13 gang.

The hard-line principles that once placed him far to the right of many other Republican senators remain intact at the Justice Department, where critics fear Sessions is eroding civil rights protections by not defending affirmative action, police reform or transgender legal rights.

But neither Sessions' work as the nation's top law enforcement official nor his loyalty seems to resonate with Trump. The president has belittled his attorney general since Sessions stepped aside from an investigation into ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump interpreted the move, which legal experts said was inevitable given Sessions' campaign support, as an act of disloyalty that led to special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at the dedication for the United States Courthouse for the Southern District of Alabama, Friday, Sept. 7, 2018, in Mobile, Ala. (AP PhotoDan Anderson)

Trump has said that if he had known Sessions would withdraw from overseeing the investigation, he would not have picked the Alabama Republican to be attorney general. The president now asserts that Sessions never has had control of the department. He also accuses Sessions of failing to aggressively pursue Trump's political rivals and to investigate potential bias in the Russia investigation.

Trump told Bloomberg News last week that Sessions' job was safe through the November election. The president gave no reassurances about after that. Meanwhile, the solid Republican support in the Senate that has buffered Sessions is showing signs of cracking.

The most recent broadside, about the charges against the two GOP lawmakers, was stunning for its norm-shattering obliteration of the bright line between the White House and Justice Department. Trump said the indictments, coming before an election when control of Congress is at stake, had left "two easy wins now in doubt." Trump ended the tweet with a sarcastic "Good job Jeff."

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., speaks with Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the dedication for the United States Courthouse for the Southern District of Alabama in Mobile, Ala. on Sept. 7, 2018. (AP PhotoDan Anderson)

"You're harassing the attorney general for not dealing with political bias at the DOJ and then conversely accusing him of not engaging in political bias at the DOJ," said Cameron Smith, a former Sessions counsel in the Senate. "Those cannot both be simultaneously consistent positions."

Sessions didn't respond to that criticism, though in the past year he has issued statements saying the department will not bend to political considerations and that he always has served with integrity and honor. His only mentions of Trump are laudatory, and in public appearances, Sessions is far more likely to focus on the work that has impassioned him for decades than on the controversies around him.

The criticism has created an unusual dynamic where Trump-aligned Republicans who ordinarily would praise Sessions are joining in the condemnation, while progressives opposed to his agenda fear that his firing for political reasons could destabilize democracy.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at the dedication for the United States Courthouse for the Southern District of Alabama, Friday, Sept. 7, 2018, in Mobile, Ala. (AP PhotoDan Anderson)

Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department civil rights chief in the Obama administration, said she believed Sessions was terrible for civil rights but she did not want him dismissed as a means of crippling Mueller's investigation.

"It isn't about protecting Jeff Sessions," Gupta said. "It's about protecting the notion that nobody is above the law in this country and that the Constitution applies to everybody."

It wasn't always this way for Sessions, a federal prosecutor during the 1980s-era "war on drugs." His conservative Senate positions, including opposing bipartisan legislation that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the country illegally, made him a natural fit for Trump.

Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump, and he joined the candidate for campaigning and foreign policy meetings. The loyalty paid off with the attorney general post, but it also wound up entangling him in the Russia investigation.

Even as Sessions has pushed the Trump agenda, he has confronted headlines about his campaign interactions with the Russian ambassador and about his attendance at a campaign meeting where the prospect of a Trump-Vladimir Putin meeting was broached.

"It's not as if Trump's background didn't have a lot of red flags in it and Sessions decided, 'Hey, I want to get on board with this person' and it frankly turned out poorly for him as a person," said Smith, the former Sessions aide. "I do think that's a lesson in discretion."

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Washington and Jay Reeves in Alabaster, Alabama, contributed to this report.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The investigation into the Brown University mass shooting has dragged on for more than four days with no named suspect, motive, weapon or even a clear image of the assailant's face that might help bring them to justice.

Investigators have been hobbled by the lack of clear eyewitness accounts of the shooter and few, if any, cameras in the wing of the building where the attack happened. Despite these difficulties, frustration was mounting Wednesday over the lack of progress in the investigation into the attack that killed two students and wounded nine others.

Here are some answers to questions about the attack and investigation:

The attack plunged the Ivy League school's campus into chaos, and there was initial confusion in the immediate aftermath. This includes President Donald Trump, who announced Saturday night that the shooter was in custody but retracted that statement 20 minutes later. Then, authorities announced early Sunday that they had detained a person of interest, but they released the person hours later after determining he didn't do it.

Police officials insist the man's detention didn't stop them from continuing to investigate other leads before his release.

Authorities have since released several security videos of a person they think might have carried out the attack. They show the individual standing, walking and even running along the streets, but their face is masked or turned away in all of them.

The state attorney general said the wing of the building where the attack happened has few “if any” cameras, and investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus. The building is on the edge of campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.

Separately, Providence police on Wednesday released a new photo of a different individual who they said was in “proximity of the person of interest” and asked the public to help identify that person so they could speak with them.

On Wednesday, Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez, said student witnesses’ accounts of the shooter match the masked person that authorities are seeking. They have stopped short of calling them a suspect, referring to them, too, as a person of interest — stressing that they believe the person was casing the area ahead of the attack.

Very little, aside from what we see of them in the footage. Investigators have described the person as being about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall and stocky.

We still don't know. Although police said this week that they believe Brown was targeted and that the videos suggest the masked person was casing the building, no one has taken credit for the attack and investigators apparently still hadn't identified a suspect as of Wednesday.

Police once again stressed Wednesday that they haven't found any evidence that a specific person was being targeted in the attack.

Police say they still don't know. The finals study session was for a “Principles of Economics” course that attracts hundreds of students each semester, but police are still tracking down how many may have been in the room.

Paxson said the university has two security systems. One is activated at a time of emergency and sent out text messages, phone calls and emails that, in this shooting, reached 20,000 people. The other system features three sirens across campus, but Paxson said that would not be activated in an active shooter situation. Brown’s website says the sirens can be used when there is an active shooter, but Paxson said it “depends on the circumstances” and the location of the shooter.

The two students who were killed and the nine others injured were studying for a final in a first-floor classroom in an older section of the engineering building when the shooter walked in and opened fire.

The students who were killed were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook, whose funeral is Monday, was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.

As for the wounded, one remained hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday and five were in stable condition, officials said. The other three were discharged.

Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi, Amanda Swinhart, Robert F. Bukaty, Matt O'Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Michael Casey in Boston; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Kathy McCormack and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington.

This combo image made with photos provided by the FBI and the Providence, Rhode Island, Police Department shows a person of interest in the shooting that occurred at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI/Providence Police Department via AP)

A memorial of flowers and signs lay outside the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University, on Hope Street in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt OBrien)

A Brown University student leaves campus, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, after all classes, exams and papers were canceled for the rest of the Fall 2025 semester following the school shooting, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)