Starr tells Trump to ‘cut it out’ with the attacks on Sessions

Ken Starr, the controversial investigator into former President Bill Clinton, told President Trump to “cut it out” with his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Starr wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post Wednesday that Trump could “tweet to [his] heart’s content, but stop the wildly inappropriate attacks on the attorney general.”

“An honorable man whom I have known since his days as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, Jeff Sessions has recently become your piñata in one of the most outrageous — and profoundly misguided — courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nation’s capital,” Starr wrote. “What you are doing is harmful to your presidency and inimical to our foundational commitment as a free people to the rule of law.”

{mosads}Trump has repeatedly attacked Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into ties between the Trump administration and Russia, saying that he is “very disappointed” by the decision and that he would have never tapped Sessions if he knew the top law enforcement official would have recused.

Starr said that Sessions’s loyalty had to be to the Constitution and U.S. laws, not to Trump.

“Indeed, the attorney general’s job, at times, is to tell the president ‘no’ because of the supervening demands of the law,” he wrote. “When it comes to dealing with the nation’s top legal officer, you will do well to check your Twitter weapons at the Oval Office door.”

“Mr. President, for the sake of the country, and for your own legacy, please listen to the growing chorus of voices who want you to succeed — by being faithful to the oath of office you took on Jan. 20 and by upholding the traditions of a nation of laws, not of men,” Starr wrote.

The op-ed comes amid rising tensions between the president and attorney general. 

Trump, who has publicly vented his frustration that Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, has not directly said he wants to fire the Justice Department head, but every day this week he’s tweeted his disappointment.