HUH: Drug prosecutions at historic low under Sessions’ “crackdown.”

At a time when President Trump has publically called Sessions “very weak,” legal experts and former prosecutors say the Senate’s inaction confirming new U.S. attorneys and a federal hiring freeze instituted by the Trump administration have left the attorney general without the tools he needs to reverse a five-year decline in drug prosecutions. Without his own people implementing tough-on-crime policies on the ground, local investigators may still be operating under Obama-era reforms and bringing less cases to the feds for prosecution.

“For four years people got used to doing things a different way,” said Mark Osler, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit. “Sessions doesn’t have the people on the ground to do the shoving.”

As the country’s highest ranking law enforcement officer, Sessions has vowed to punish drug offenders with the harshest possible sentences, a drastic shift from drug policy under President Obama. In a memo to U.S. Attorneys in May, he reversed an an Obama-era reform, urging prosecutors to enhance sentences for those who violate federal drug laws.

But so far Sessions’ changes have not registered in drug prosecution data.

Maybe he is weak after all.