Conservative religious leader says Jeff Sessions no longer has evangelical support

0
29
jeff-sessions-and-donald-trump

One of the top conservative evangelical leaders in the nation is urging President Donald Trump to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

On Monday, POLITICO reported that Jerry Falwell Jr.,a lawyer and President of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., urged Trump to fire Sessions.

“He really is not on the president’s team, never was,” Falwell toldPolitico. “He’s wanted to be attorney general for many, many years. I have a feeling he took a gamble and supported the president because he knew he would reward loyalty.”

Sessions has long been a supporter of conservative evangelicals, going so far as to launch a religious liberty task force within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in July, citing a “dangerous movement” to erode religious freedom in America.

“A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. There can be no doubt. This is no little matter. It must be confronted and defeated,” Sessions told attendees of the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Summit.

But Sessions “has angered Trump loyalists more recently because the Justice Department has not declassified all materials sought by Republicans in regard to the Russia investigation,” Politico reported. “The president believes Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia probe because of his involvement in the 2016 campaign, has failed to rein in a probe that Trump claims is driven by politics.”

Last week, Trump fired several barbs at Sessions, telling Fox news channel’s “Fox & Friends” that Sessions “took the job and then he said, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.”

“[He] never took control of the Justice Department and it’s a sort of an incredible thing,” Trump continued.

Sessions then fired back at the president, saying that the DOJ would not be “improperly influenced by political considerations.”

“A lot of Republicans pretend to be friends to conservatives and the faith community for decades when they really were not,” Falwell continued to tell Politico. “I don’t know if he’s in that category. If he was really a fair person, he’d be going after both sides.”