President told Porter to “Keep in touch with your friend,” in reference to 743 Brand. Later, the President asked Porter a few times in passing whether he had spoken to Brand, but Porter did not reach out to her because he was 744 uncomfortable with the task. In asking him to reach out to Brand, Porter understood the President to want to find someone to end the Russia investigation 745 or fire the Special Counsel, although the President never said so explicitly. Porter did not contact Brand because he was sensitive to the implications of that action and did not want to be involved in a chain of events associated with an 746 effort to end the investigation or fire the Special Counsel. McGahn recalled that during the summer of 2017, he and the President discussed the fact that if Sessions were no longer in his position the Special 747 Counsel would report directly to a non-recused Attorney General. McGahn told the President that things might not change much under a new Attorney 748 General. McGahn also recalled that in or around July 2017, the President 749 frequently brought up his displeasure with Sessions. Hicks recalled that the President viewed Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation as an act of 750 disloyalty. In addition to criticizing Sessions’s recusal, the President raised other concerns about Sessions and his job performance with McGahn and 751 Hicks. 2. Additional Efforts to Have Sessions Unrecuse or Direct Investigations Covered by his Recusal Later in 2017, the President continued to urge Sessions to reverse his recusal from campaign-related investigations and considered replacing Sessions with an Attorney General who would not be recused. On October 16, 2017, the President met privately with Sessions and said that the Department of Justice was not investigating individuals and events that the 752 President thought the Department should be investigating. According to contemporaneous notes taken by Porter, who was at the meeting, the President mentioned Clinton’s emails and said, “Don’t have to tell us, just take [a] 753 look.” Sessions did not offer any assurances or promises to the President that 754 the Department of Justice would comply with that request. Two days later,