Jeff Sessions Comes Under Scrutiny for Failing to Disclose Meetings With Russian Ambassador

Several Democrats and Republicans are calling for the newly-minted attorney general to recuse himself from probes into the Trump administration’s links to Russia after news that he concealed two encounters with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 campaign season became known. Democrats such as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi are also demanding that the attorney general step down, just weeks after former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned for arguably similar reasons.

From The Guardian:

A spokeswoman for Sessions confirmed that the meetings took place, but provided a statement from the attorney general saying they were not related to the election campaign.

“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” Sessions’ statement said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

Sessions, a former senator from Alabama who was among Trump’s early and most vocal surrogates on the campaign trail, did not disclose the conversations when asked under oath during his Senate confirmation hearing in early 2017 about possible contacts between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. … The White House swiftly rejected the reports as an effort to undermine Trump’s speech before Congress on Tuesday night, which was reviewed favourably by the US media despite signalling no substantive shift in policy.

“This is the latest attack against the Trump administration by partisan Democrats,” a senior administration official said, according to CNN.

“Sessions met with the ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate armed services committee, which is entirely consistent with his testimony.”

When Sessions was asked during his 10 January testimony to the Senate judiciary committee how he would respond if he learned of communications between the Trump campaign and Russian officials leading up to the election, he said he was “not aware of any of those activities”.

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— Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

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