The report quotes various officials as saying that they could not guarantee that Trump would not try to talk to Comey alone again.
If Sessions were to confirm the report, it would support Comey in establishing that he did indeed reach out to not only Main Justice but the Attorney General himself after Trump allegedly sought to persuade him to drop the investigation.
The accounts of Trump berating Sessions over his decision to recuse himself is particularly worrisome. As I discussed earlier, Sessions’ decision to recuse himself was not only clearly correct but, if anything, belated. Moreover, in the same week that Trump lambasted the Justice Department, the Sessions story would indicate a worsening situation between the White House and the DOJ. I said earlier that Trump cannot be at war with every institution from Congress to the courts to the media. If he is now sparing with his own Administration, the situation is reaching an acutely dysfunctional stage. Trump cannot be an outsider in his own Administration.
I assume that Comey will not testify that he believed that Trump had engaged in actual obstruction of justice in his conversations. Otherwise, his own failure to act would be problematic. Yet, the account of his request to Sessions (if true) would indicate that Comey was sufficiently concerned to request help directly from the Attorney General.