WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said that his biggest mistake was naming former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to be his first attorney general.
“I would say if I had one do-over, it would be, I would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general,” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press broadcast on Sunday. “That was the biggest mistake.”
Sessions recused himself from supervising the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia interference in the 2016 election because he had been an adviser to Trump’s campaign. That led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey.
Trump repeatedly assailed Sessions for recusing himself from the probe for more than a year until the attorney general resigned in 2018.
Sessions is reportedly considering running for his old Senate seat, currently held by Democrat Doug Jones.
ISTANBUL — The opposition candidate for mayor of Istanbul celebrated a landmark win Sunday in a closely watched repeat election that ended weeks of political tension and broke the long hold President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party had on leading Turkey’s largest city.
“Thank you, Istanbul,” Ekrem Imamoglu, 49, said to the tens of thousands of people who gathered to mark his victory after unofficial results showed he won a clear majority of the vote.
The governing party’s candidate, former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, conceded moments after returns showed him trailing well behind Imamoglu, 54% to 45%. Imamoglu increased his lead from a March mayoral election by hundreds of thousands of votes.
Erdogan congratulated Imamoglu in a tweet. Analysts noted the president, who is grappling with an economic downturn and several international crises, could limit the mayor’s power or undermine Imamoglu’s authority in other ways.
Imamoglu narrowly won an earlier mayoral election on March 31, but Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP, challenged the vote over alleged irregularities.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s military chief was shot to death by his bodyguard amid a failed coup attempt against a regional government north of the capital, Addis Ababa, the prime minister said Sunday.
The abortive coup Saturday in the Amhara region was led by a high-ranking military officer and others in the armed forces, said Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who addressed the nation on state TV at 2 a.m. while wearing fatigues.
The soldiers attacked a building where a meeting of regional officials was taking place, said Ni gussu Tilahun, a spokesman for the prime minister. The regional governor and an adviser were killed, while the attorney general was wounded, he said.
Not long after afterward, army chief Gen. Seare Mekonnen who was assassinated at his home in Addis Ababa, and a retired army general visiting him was also killed, the spokesman said.
“There is a link between the two attacks,” Nigussu said without elaborating.
— Wire reports