No specification of whether he was fired or resigned. Probably pressured into the latter to shave off one small sliver of political backlash. Edit: yep
This is exactly the day I thought Jeff Sessions would go bye-bye. If you're a news organization with more than two reporters, you probably had your "Jeff Sessions is out at the DoJ" article written over a year ago.
I also expect big headlines from Mueller within about 52 hours.
Edit2: In case you missed it, Trump has appointed Session's ex-Chief of Staff, Matthew Whitaker, as acting attorney general, which gives Whitaker oversight of the special counsel's investigation. Before Whitaker was hired by the DoJ last year, he wrote an op-ed for CNN highly critical of the special counsel. So this is a person with a clear conflict of interest and appointed without Senate confirmation now in charge of the Mueller investigation. I'm kinda afraid of what happens next.
Mueller has been quietly working behind the scenes, giving the usual DoJ courtesy of not influencing an election with announcements about an ongoing investigation (looking at you, James Comey). Of course, he was probably also shielding himself from what would have been a nasty presidential tweetstorm and probably getting fired. He might still get fired, and Sessions leaving puts us one step closer. I think Mueller will probably want to act pretty fast if he's been sitting on something he feels needs to get out, and this news only hastens that. There's a lot of rumors out there concerning Roger Stone and Trump Jr., but I have no real way to gauge how substantiated they are. But this was solid reporting indicating some action behind the curtain (I know you saw it, posting for posterity): As for Rosenstein, good question. Supposedly Trump and Rosenstein have a good rapport, despite the wiretapping story a couple of months ago:
I should have clarified, 52 hours from the time of the post puts us at 7 PM EST on Friday. Re: Rosenstein, control of the Mueller investigation was taken from Rosenstein and given to the new, temporary acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who has criticized the scope of the probe and suggested cutting off its funding shortly before he was hired on last year at the DoJ. Just a bit fishy
Yeahhhh I put that in "Edit2" about an hour ago, but it's probably important enough for another post entirely. Whitaker should recuse himself immediately.