Breaking: Jeff Sessions Out as Attorney General

NEW UPDATE below: What the new acting AG has said about the Mueller investigation.

This is a developing story, return to this post for updates.

UPDATE 1

From Sessions letter:

"At your request, I am submitting my resignation"

UPDATE 2

Matthew Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, named acting Attorney General.

UPDATE 3

Via The Washington Post:

Appearing on CNN in July 2017 — before he became Sessions’s chief of staff, the position he occupied before Wednesday — Whitaker mused about a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with a temporary attorney general. Whitaker noted that federal regulations still gave the attorney general power over the budget for a special counsel. That temporary replacement, he then said, could move to choke off Mueller’s funding.

“So I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment,” Whitaker said, “and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”

UPDATE 4

Via The Washington Post:

Whitaker has also made it clear he doesn’t particularly like how far Mueller has gone. He wrote an op-ed in August 2017 titled, “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going too far” that urged Rosenstein to “limit the scope of this investigation.”

“The President is absolutely correct,” Whitaker said after Trump suggested that Mueller investigating his finances would cross a red line. “Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.”

He has also downplayed the idea that anything illegal was done at the Trump Tower meeting, saying, “You would always take the meeting."

UPDATE 5

....We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well! A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018

UPDATE 6

Jeff Sessions has left the building. He exited to a crowd of at least 150 applauding DOJ employees. He shook hands with new acting AG Matt Whitaker, DAG Rod Rosenstein, SG Noel Francisco, and Civil Division head Jody Hunt. He gave a thumbs up and got into a waiting SUV pic.twitter.com/JOmVlAs2vz

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) November 7, 2018

-RW