Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions seems to be taking his ouster from the Justice Department pretty well.
The 71-year-old on Wednesday joked about President Donald Trump forcing him to resign earlier this month.
“Well, a lot has changed since my visit here a few months ago,” Sessions said during his speech at the annual Chicago Crime Commission awards dinner. “I got a new title: former.”
“A lot of people have gotten pink slips, I guess, but mine’s a little more public than most, I gotta say,” he added, drawing muffled laughter from the audience. “But I really enjoyed the honor and appreciate the president allowing me to serve almost two years in one of the greatest jobs in the world.”
Trump announced Sessions’ resignation on Nov. 7 ― a departure that had long been expected, given the president’s frequent and public jabs at his attorney general.
The president named Matt Whitaker, Sessions’ former chief of staff and a sharp critic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, as the acting attorney general.
Sessions was an early supporter of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, but his decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe enraged the president. Trump publicly dragged Sessions for months before finally cutting him loose a day after the midterm elections.
Under Trump, there has been unprecedented turnover at the highest levels of government. Dozens of top officials in the Trump administration have either been fired or resigned in the last 18 months.