Former Auburn University head football coach Tommy Tuberville continued his attack on former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ time leading the Department of Justice.
Tuberville, who along with Sessions is running in Alabama’s 2020 Republican U.S. Senate primary field, has sharply criticized Sessions’ tenure as the Trump administration’s first attorney general.
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This took another turn Thursday when Tuberville reacted in a statement to a series of Sessions tweets from the previous day.
Sessions, with the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump ongoing, was addressing former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton has written a book that just went on preorder the same day that a Bolton manuscript leaked to the New York Times that alleged Trump told him the president would delay military aid to Ukraine until it conducted an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Referring to Bolton writing the book, Sessions said in one tweet, “It is an act of disloyalty to the administration one serves, and tends to undermine the unity and teamwork needed to reach the highest level of effectiveness.”
Tuberville, in his statement, accused Sessions of being hypocritical, noting that Trump previously referenced Sessions’ “betrayal” during his time as attorney general.
“This election boils down to one simple question – who will be loyal to our president and our nation. When Donald Trump needed him most, Jeff Sessions was neither, but I’ll be both,” Tuberville said. “For Jeff Sessions to call anyone else ‘disloyal’ is the ultimate hypocrisy after he abandoned the president during the travesty of the Russia collusion investigation.”
“One thing is for certain – when the attacks start coming, you don’t want to share a foxhole with John Bolton or Jeff Sessions. They’re two peas in a pod,” he added. “Mitt Romney and the other Republicans waffling on impeachment are proving that we’ve already got enough cut-and-run congressman on Capitol Hill, and Alabama doesn’t need to send them another.”
Tuberville also pointed to past Trump tweets attacking Sessions, including one in which the president referred to his then-attorney general as “scared stiff and Missing in Action.”
“Instead of sending tweets, perhaps Jeff Sessions should spend his time reading the president’s tweets about his time as attorney general,” Tuberville concluded. “As U.S. senator, I’ll be unabashedly loyal to Donald Trump, and he’ll know that Alabama will always have his back.”
It should be noted that Sessions addressed the Bolton situation in a Fox News interview Wednesday evening. During that interview, Sessions emphasized that he did not write a book or do a tell-all style interview on CNN after he was forced to resign as attorney general in late 2018.
As one of his reasons for not taking those actions, Sessions explained in a tweet, “I don’t believe it is the honorable thing to do. You are there to serve his agenda, not your own. He was elected, not you.”
I have not written a book or gone on CNN, because when you serve the President, you are there to serve his policy agenda, not your own. pic.twitter.com/mXzY10w2Ba
— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) January 30, 2020
The president has not weighed in on Alabama’s GOP Senate primary, which will be held March 3.
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Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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