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.

MOSCOW (AP) — Moscow will observe the limits of the last nuclear arms pact with the United States that expired last week as long as it sees that Washington is doing the same, Russia's top diplomat said Wednesday.

The New START treaty expired Feb. 5, leaving no restrictions on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but U.S. President Donald Trump has argued that he wants China to be a part of a new pact — something Beijing has rejected.

Speaking Wednesday to the parliament's lower house, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that even though the U.S. hasn't responded to Putin's offer, Russia will respect New START's caps for as long as it sees that the U.S. observes them too.

“The moratorium declared by the president will remain as long as the U.S. doesn't exceed these limits,” Lavrov told lawmakers. "We will act in a responsible and balanced way on the basis of analysis of the U.S. military policies.”

He added that “we have reason to believe that the United States is in no hurry to abandon these limits and that they will be observed for the foreseeable future.”

“We will closely monitor how things are actually unfolding," Lavrov said. "If our American colleagues’ intention to maintain some kind of cooperation on this is confirmed, we will work actively on a new agreement and consider the issues that have remained outside strategic stability agreements."

Lavrov's statement followed a report by Axios claiming Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed a possible informal deal to observe the pact’s limits for at least six months during talks last week in Abu Dhabi. Asked to comment on the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that any such extension could only be formal, adding that “it’s hard to imagine any informal extension in this sphere.”

At the same time, Peskov confirmed that Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed future nuclear arms control in Abu Dhabi where delegations from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington held two days of talks on a peace settlement in Ukraine.

“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible,” Peskov said.

New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, was the last of a long series of agreements between Moscow and Washington to limit their nuclear arsenals, starting with SALT I in 1972.

New START restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers deployed and ready for use. It was originally set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years.

The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies openly declared they wanted Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine. But the Kremlin also emphasized it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

In September, Putin offered to keep the New START’s limits for another year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement.

Even as New START expired, the U.S. and Russia agreed on Feb. 5 to reestablish high-level, military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between senior officials from both sides in Abu Dhabi, the U.S. military command in Europe said. The link was suspended in 2021 as relations grew increasingly strained before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Lavrov described personal relations between Putin and Trump as “excellent,” saying that their “mutual sympathy and respect helped create the atmosphere that allowed them to reach understanding" on specific issues during their August summit in Anchorage, Alaska, including Ukraine.

Asked by lawmakers about the U.S. bid to take control of Greenland, Lavrov said it doesn't concern Russia, but he noted that “in case of militarization of Greenland and the creation of military capabilities there aimed against Russia, we will take relevant countermeasures, including those of a military-technical character.”

He described the U.S. ban for Russia, China and Iran to make any transactions with Venezuelan oil as “discriminatory,” noting that Moscow expects Washington to develop relations on the basis of “mutual respect.”

Lavrov emphasized that while the Kremlin hasn't yet launched a “strategic dialogue” with the Trump administration, “we are always open for such dialogue.”

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Additional AP coverage: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/

In this photo released by The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, centre, delivers his speech at the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament in Moscow, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, baclground right, delivers his speech at the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament in Moscow, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gestures as he delivers his speech at the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament in Moscow, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation Press Service via AP)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during a news conference following his meeting with OSCE Chairman-in-Office Ignazio Cassis and OSCE Secretary General Feridun H. Sinirlioglu at Zinaida Morozova's Mansion in Moscow, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool)

FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin, Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

FILE - This photo taken from a video distributed on Dec. 9, 2020 by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, shows a rocket launch as part of a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile test at the Plesetsk facility in northwestern Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)