A tip o’ the cap to America’s former chief law enforcement officer here, seemingly admitting that he’d withhold evidence of presidential misconduct from the public amid an impeachment inquiry because loyalty to Trump comes first.

FIRST – I don’t believe it is the honorable thing to do. You are there to serve his agenda, not your own. He was elected, not you.

— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) January 29, 2020

THIRD – it sets a very damaging and dangerous precedent. A President must have the ability to have candid conversations with his National Security Advisor, his AG, his SOS, etc., without fear that those conversations will end up in a book or a newspaper.

— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) January 29, 2020

This is framed as a critique of Bolton’s willingness to cash in on his White House service by writing a book. But in context, given all the whispers lately about what Bolton knows about Ukraine and the momentous Senate vote tomorrow on calling witnesses, it’s obviously aimed at pressuring him not to incriminate Trump. To offer material facts in a trial focused on possible presidential corruption would be treacherous, says a guy who served as Attorney General for a year and a half. There’s not a whiff in his tweets of the idea that an official in the executive branch might owe a greater loyalty to the public by revealing wrongdoing — or at least participating in an exercise to find out if wrongdoing occurred — than to the president himself.

Which is ironic in Sessions’s case, since it was his own “disloyalty” in recusing himself from the Russiagate probe that led Trump to spend 15 months or so ripping on him publicly two or three times a week. That’s what these tweets are about, of course — trying to undo his original sin in the mind of Trumpers, particularly Trumpers in Alabama, by attacking TrumpWorld’s current public enemy number one.

It might work out for him. A week ago Trump himself touted this poll of the Alabama Senate primary:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1220452007389155328

A tight race, but one led by Sessions. A separate internal poll published on Monday by Breitbart, of all places, found him leading much more comfortably, 43/22 over Bradley Byrne. Sessions appears to have made a cold political calculation when he decided to run for his old seat, offering Trump a tacit deal. In return for the president staying out of the race Sessions would present him with what’s left of his dignity, preaching unwavering loyalty to Trump at every turn in hopes of convincing Alabama Republicans to forgive and forget the 8,000 “Jeff Sessions sucks” tweets that Trump sent while Sessions was AG. All Trump had to do was keep quiet during the primary and he would be gifted Sessions’s spine in an attractive display case for mounting in the Oval Office.

Seems like the deal’s working out for both of them.

Another way of putting that is that Sessions’s concept of “loyalty” is as self-serving as Trump’s is. It’s not based on personal admiration or “mutual respect.” It’s transactional. Trump demands fealty, not loyalty, and Sessions is now willing to provide that to the extent that it might get him his old job back. John Bolton, for whatever unknown admirable or dubious reason, isn’t. But let’s not overlook Sessions’s true motives just because he’s climbed on his high horse to lecture Bolton on this topic.

Exit question per Sessions’s last tweet: Does our former Attorney General believe that legal privileges are absolute? Even the most famous privilege, between attorney and client, contains an exception for particular types of misconduct. Under what circumstances does he think a presidential aide would have a duty to speak out publicly about communications between him and the president? Are there any or is he calling for a true omerta ethic in the White House?