Pressure mounts as Sessions backs off from Russia probe

WASHINGTON: Attorney General Jeff Sessions may not have been clear about his contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 election, but this much is evident: The controversy over any Kremlin involvement in American politics is not going to fade away anytime soon. Sessions on Thursday became the second high-ranking member of the Trump administration to take a hit over conversations with Russia’s envoy to the US, recusing himself from any probe that examines communications between Trump aides and Moscow. An early backer and key adviser for Trump’s campaign, Sessions said his staff recommended that he step aside from a probe.

“I feel I should not be involved in investigating a campaign I had a role in,” he said. Sessions’ action followed revelations that he twice spoke with the Russian ambassador and didn’t say so when pressed, under oath, by Congress. Though he rejected any suggestion that he tried to mislead anyone, he did allow that he should have been more careful in his testimony. “I should have slowed down and said, ‘But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times,’” he said.

The recusal, despite White House support for him, followed a chorus of demands that Sessions resolve the seeming contradiction between his two conversations with Moscow’s US envoy, Sergey Kislyak, and his statements to Congress in January that he had not communicated with Russians during the campaign. It carried echoes of a similar controversy involving retired Gen Michael Flynn, who two weeks ago resigned as national security adviser after misleading White House officials about his own discussions with Kislyak.

Additional communication was revealed Thursday between Kislyak and Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at New York’s Trump Tower. In addition, Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, spoke with the ambassador last summer, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.