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Yes, of course you are right it makes perfect sense now that I think about it and you pointed it out... I just never thought about it until you said “appoint one himself”. Never happened in my lifetime, and generally you don’t think of the White House as being the Justice Department. And since SPs are used mainly when there is some kind of conflict of interest (like, internal investigations) you don’t generally think that POTUS would even want one.

Heck, in spite of scores of Scandals Obama never had one. He was treated with great political deference by nearly everyone.

But yeah, you are right. POTUS is The Man. The DOJ has a Cabinet Official at its head but the Cabinet reports to and executes the policies of POTUS. So of course, either way, Trump orders Sessions to appoint someone (identified or not) or he does it himself. The only real consideration are the political optics. One of the political reasons for giving the Cabinet some ballyhoo is that it enables POTUS to keep the appearance of arms length.

But of course, when I read a few months ago some on the left and some idiot journalists talking about “checks and balances, not interfering with the DOJ, obstruction of justice etc” I laughed because of course that’s a crock. You cannot obstruct yourself. DOJ is an executive agency and reports to POTUS. It is part of the Executives’ checks and balances power, and not a check and balance against the Executive. It is not a branch of government, it is an agency at the discretion of the Executive.

So again, of course you are right, it should have been obvious to me all along! I knew POTUS could give a direct order to the AG but just never occurred to me he could simply do it himself over the head of his own AG if he wanted to.