Jeff Sessions: Another Brick in the Wall

So last night the Washington Post reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to Congress under oath.

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race. …

… At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak.

“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman.

No, not “misleading” at all. It was a flat-out lie.

There are widespread calls for Sessions to recuse himself from any investigations involving the Trump Administration and Russia. But since he’s the head of the Justice Department and FBI, I’m not sure how that could work or be inforced. No, for once, I’m siding with Chuck Schumer — Sessions should bleeping resign.

Chris Cillizza wrote that it’s now political suicide for the Republicans to stonewall a deeper investigation into the Russian connection, but I predict they will continue to stonewall. Certainly the Trumpettes will continue to deny anybody did anything wrong, because that’s all they know how to do.

This morning the Trumpettes are arguing that Sessions met with the Russians in his capacity as senator, not as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. However,

Sessions was clearly identified as a senior adviser to the Trump campaign ahead of the first of his meetings with the ambassador, and his ties to Trump world are deep and far-reaching. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump; served as chairman of his national security advisory committee; is seen as an intellectual godfather of key Trump administration policies, like the travel ban against citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries; was a frequent presence at Trump Tower during the post-election transition to the White House; and loaned key members of his senior staff to the Trump campaign, several of whom ended up with plum roles in the administration.

Greg Sargent:

The news is breaking that two prominent Republicans — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz — are now calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from ongoing FBI investigations into Russian meddling in the election. This comes after The Post reported that Sessions twice spoke with the Russian ambassador during the campaign, after having claimed under oath that he had not had contact with Russian officials.

The latest moves by two senior Republicans amount to a sign that, little by little, the protective wall the GOP has built around President Trump is beginning to erode, though there is still a long, long way to go before we can expect any serious oversight.

Josh Marshall:

My biggest takeaway is that this scandal has all the attributes of the vast and shattering scandals in which people who at least appear to have only indirect or limited roles themselves keep getting pulled under or compromised by it. I know “vast and shattering” is a pretty portentous phrase. Certainly, this revelation itself doesn’t shake anything to its foundations. But why did Sessions have this meeting at all? It seems at best ill-conceived, coming in the heat of allegations of inappropriate connections between Trump and Russia last Fall.

Far more baffling, why did he choose to conceal it?

See also Charles Pierce.

8 thoughts on “Jeff Sessions: Another Brick in the Wall

  1. Sessions “…is seen as an intellectual godfather of key Trump administration policies, like the travel ban against citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries;…”

    Any sentient animal would be insulted by having Jeff KKK Sessions named as its intellectual godfather.

    You know what’s funny (not really)?
    As a first generations of Russian/Ukrainian decent, in all of my family get-togethers over the last few years, I’ve probably talked to less “Russians” than t-RUMPLE-Thin-Skin’s minions in the last year, plus!

    As the ATTORNEY GENERAL – the TOP legal person in any administration – Sessions shouldn’t just recuse himself.
    He needs to resign his position.
    Either that, or hopefully even the Republicans will realize the stink of bad borscht, cheap vodka, and overly perfumed Russian hookers, coming off of this Confederate bigot – and now, possible traitor – is so powerful, that he’s tainting them. And then, force him out.

    Yeah, I know, THAT’LL happen!
    A boy can dream, though, can’t he?

  2. Looks like Sessions recused. In “word”; “deed” remains to be seen. It would be hard to have any confidence in his immediate reports.

  3. Josh Marshall asks why Sessions chose to conceal it. Answer: because of loyalty, and because of a deep-seated belied that IOKIYAR, even when it’s really not OK. This is really not OK.

    Maha observes, “It’s now political suicide for the Republicans to stonewall a deeper investigation into the Russian connection, but I predict they will continue to stonewall.” I agree. So come on already, Republicans — kill yourselves. It’s better to die than admit you did something wrong.
    http://www.philosophers-stone.co.uk/?p=2318

  4. Lie and then lie about your lie. What else would you expect from a party who’s agenda is built on lies. The question is why good Americans keep falling for this?

  5. Sessions recusing himself should not be a shield from further investigation of his direct involvement with the investigation into the Trump campaign’s colluding with Russia to impact the elections on their behalf.

    But that’s probably the only reason Sessions recused himself at all, as an attempt to stanch the process leading towards his own culpability on the scheme as well as the obvious, that he committed perjury and should be prosecuted.

    In fact, if Sessions is not prosecuted, then a very telling precedent has been set: there is clearly a different set of rules for republicans.

  6. So now Sessions is saying that he “forgot” that he talked to the Russians as part of his duties, so he couldn’t answer that he hasn’t talked to the Russians “outside of my official duties for the Senate”?

    I’m sorry – they launched a grand jury investigation because Clinton got the court to accept an unfalsifiable version of “have sex” – basically, did HE ever touch HER for *HER* pleasure? Technically, if he tried to bring her to orgasm, because he liked to watch women have an orgasm, he could say “no, it was all for MY pleasure.”

    That’s sneaky, but *perfect* for the situation President Clinton had been placed in: he was placed in a perjury trap, so that they could force him to admit to embarrassing, scandalous information under oath, when doing so wouldn’t affect the case’s outcome. When you’re being hounded unethically, and your enemies are using the courts to harass, rather than to seek redress, you should protect yourself.

    Sessions doesn’t have that. He was not placed in a perjury trap. He was asked a pertinent question, and volunteered information. He’s also a lawyer – don’t you (expletive) tell me that he didn’t know how to provide a proper answer.

    Sessions deserves to be pilloried for having engaged in racially motivated malicious prosecution. If he “only” gets shamed, resigns, and disbarred for perjury, he’d be getting off lightly from the perspective of justice.

Comments are closed.