Congress and the Special Counsel. H. The President’s Further Efforts to Have the Attorney General Take Over the Investigation Overview From summer 2017 through 2018, the President attempted to have Attorney General Sessions reverse his recusal, take control of the Special Counsel’s investigation, and order an investigation of Hillary Clinton. Evidence 1. The President Again Seeks to Have Sessions Reverse his Recusal After returning Sessions’s resignation letter at the end of May 2017, but before the President’s July 19, 2017 New York Times interview in which he publicly criticized Sessions for recusing from the Russia investigation, the President took additional steps to have Sessions reverse his recusal. In particular, at some point after the May 17, 2017 appointment of the Special Counsel, Sessions recalled, the President called him at home and asked if Sessions would 736 “unrecuse” himself. According to Sessions, the President asked him to reverse his recusal so that Sessions could direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton, and the “gist” of the conversation was that the President wanted Sessions to unrecuse from “all of it,” including the 737 Special Counsel’s Russia investigation. Sessions listened but did not respond, and he did not reverse his recusal or order an investigation of 738 Clinton. In early July 2017, the President asked Staff Secretary Rob Porter what he 739 thought of Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand. Porter recalled that the 740 President asked him if Brand was good, tough, and “on the team.” The President also asked if Porter thought Brand was interested in being responsible for the Special Counsel’s investigation and whether she would want to be 741 Attorney General one day. Because Porter knew Brand, the President asked him to sound her out about taking responsibility for the investigation and being 742 Attorney General. Contemporaneous notes taken by Porter show that the