Comey testified under oath to Congress last week that he believed he was sacked 'because of the Russian Federation investigation'.
Asked by Republican Senator Marco Rubio about a February 14 Oval Office with Trump, Sessions responded, "That's a communication in the White House that I'd not comment on".
The addition to Mueller's team of a prosecutor including Andrew Weissmann, Supreme Court advocate and criminal law expert Michael Dreeben, and others experienced in complex fraud and worldwide bribery cases suggests that the probe may be looking at more than "collusion" between Russian officials and Trump team members.
So when Sessions testifies today before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where will his allegiances lie? That prompted Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller - himself a former Federal Bureau of Investigation director - as special counsel the following week. That showed that Trump is not one to be impeded by political protocol - Comey's 10-year term wasn't set to expire until 2023.
No wonder Trump is still ruminating about firing Mueller. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on a subcommittee of the Judiciary panel, said: "As someone who served in the Department of Justice, I would love to know what he is talking about".
The NSA said in a statement that it will "fully cooperate with the special counsel" and declined to give any more information than that.
Comey also suggested another factor in his termination was his declining to lift what Trump, during private phone conversations, described as the "cloud" of the bureau's Russian Federation probe hanging over his presidency that was making it hard for him to govern.
"It'd be be inappropriate for me to answer and reveal private conversations with the president when he has not had a full opportunity to review the questions", explained Sessions.
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Sen. Mark Warner, D., Va., asked the attorney general if he had confidence in former FBI Director Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel to probe whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian Federation.
Do I wish the president would conform a little to the traditions most Americans expect of a White House occupant? I do. But time and again, Sessions returned to lines such as "I am not able to discuss with you or confirm or deny the nature of private conversations that I may have had with the president on this subject or others".
Coats, like Sessions, said he did not know whether the White House would block his participation in the questioning by asserting executive privilege.
The Post report only further embroils Trump and his presidency in legal problems that also feature lawsuits from the District of Columbia and Maryland, as well as almost 200 congressional Democrats, over his business holdings and foreign governments. "It's my judgment that I was sacked because of the Russian Federation investigation", Comey said.
But Cornell Law School professor Jens David Ohlin said Sessions' reasoning did not make sense.
"He must keep an arms length distance from Jim Comey", Malcolm said but added he personally isn't concerned about Mueller's handling of the investigation. He's also attempting to garner documents from the NSA to determine how the White House interacted with the National Security Agency in regards to the Russian Federation investigation. But if there were anything damning that investigators had found during the course of an investigation that dates back at least to last summer, someone in the Justice Department would nearly certainly have leaked it by now - the way that leakers have disclosed anything else that makes Trump look bad.
Allies have even floated the idea that Mueller may be fired.
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