Washington — US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions was fired by Donald Trump Wednesday after enduring more than a year of bitter criticism from the president over his decision to step aside from the Russia investigation that has dogged the White House. Sessions became the first casualty of a cabinet shakeup that had been expected from Trump following the midterm elections on Tuesday. “At your request, I am submitting my resignation,” Sessions said in the first line of a letter released by the Department of Justice. The departure of Sessions, who was the first US senator to back Trump’s presidential run in 2016, was long expected, and came one day after Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives but boosted their Senate majority. Trump had repeatedly assailed him publicly for not taking a tougher approach to illegal immigrants, and accused him of protecting Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians — an investigation that is also ...

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