Porter recalled that the President talked about the great attorneys he had in the past with successful win records, such as Roy Cohn and Jay Goldberg, and said that one of his biggest failings as President was that he had not surrounded 766 himself with good attorneys, citing Sessions as an example. The President raised Sessions’s recusal and brought up and criticized the Special Counsel’s 767 investigation. Over the next several months, the President continued to criticize Sessions in tweets and media interviews and on several occasions appeared to publicly 768 encourage him to take action in the Russia investigation despite his recusal. On June 5, 2018, for example, the President tweeted, “The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself. . . . I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined . . . and Sessions knew better than most that 769 there was No Collusion!” On August 1, 2018, the President tweeted that “Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right 770 now.” On August 23, 2018, the President publicly criticized Sessions in a press interview and suggested that prosecutions at the Department of Justice were politically motivated because Paul Manafort had been prosecuted but 771 Democrats had not. The President said, “I put in an Attorney General that 772 never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions.” That day, Sessions issued a press statement that said, “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in . . . . While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political 773 considerations.” The next day, the President tweeted a response: ‘“Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.’ Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the ‘other side’ including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country 774 is waiting!” On November 7, 2018, the day after the midterm elections, the President 775 replaced Sessions with Sessions’s chief of staff as Acting Attorney General.