Embattled Sessions bows out of inquiries
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions, facing a storm of criticism over newly disclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, recused himself on Thursday from any investigation into charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
His announcement, delivered at a terse news conference, came after a day of rapid-fire developments in a murky affair that has shadowed President Donald Trump, jeopardized his closest aides and intensified pressure for a full investigation into Moscow’s attempts to influence the election, as well as raise persistent questions about the policies of the new administration.
Trump stoutly defended Sessions, one of his few early champions on Capi-
tol Hill, but many top Democrats demanded Sessions’ resignation, and a growing number of Republicans declared that he should not take part in any investigation into the case, given his own still largely unexplained role in it.
Sessions insisted there was nothing nefarious about his two meetings with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, even though he did not disclose them to the Senate during his confirmation hearing and they occurred during the heat of the race between Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and Trump, whom Sessions was advising on national security.
In his account of the more substantive meeting, which took place in his Senate office Sept. 8, Sessions described Kislyak as one of a parade of envoys who seek out lawmakers like him to glean information about U.S. policies and promote the agendas of their governments.
“Somehow, the subject of Ukraine came up,” Sessions said, recalling that the meeting grew testy after the ambassador defended Russia’s conduct toward its neighbor and heaped blame on everybody else. “I thought he was pretty much of an old-style, Soviet-type ambassador,” Sessions said, noting that he did not accept a lunch invitation from Kislyak.
Sessions’ decision to recuse himself was one of his first public acts as attorney general. He said he made the decision after consulting with officials at the Justice Department, and he denied misleading Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., when he said during his confirmation hearing that he had not met with Russian officials about the Trump campaign.
“In retrospect,” Session said, “I should have slowed down and said, ‘But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times, and that would be the ambassador.’”
The latest disclosures — and the Trump administration’s contradictory accounts of them — have deepened the questions about Russia’s role in the election and its aftermath. It has fueled calls for congressional and independent investigations, and toppled another close Trump aide, Michael Flynn, who resigned as national security adviser last month after admitting he had misled the administration over his contacts with Kislyak.
On Thursday, the White House confirmed that Flynn had his own previously undisclosed meeting with the ambassador in December to “establish a line of communication” between the incoming administration and the Russian government. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower.
The extent and frequency of the Flynn-Kislyak contacts remains unclear. But news of the meeting added to the emerging picture of how the relationship between Trump’s incoming team and Moscow was evolving to include some of Trump’s most trusted advisers.
Sessions’ decision to recuse himself exposed a rift between the White House and the Justice Department, not only over whether he should do so — Trump said he did not think he needed to — but over Trump’s public assertions about the issue. A Justice official confessed puzzlement about why the White House regularly asserted that no one from the Trump campaign had any contact with the Russian government.
Trump said that he “wasn’t aware” that Sessions had spoken to the ambassador, but that he believed the attorney general had testified truthfully during his confirmation hearing. “I think he probably did,” Trump told reporters, while touring the USS Gerald R. Ford, the newest American aircraft carrier, in Newport News, Va.
The disclosure, first reported by the Washington Post, contradicted forceful and repeated denials from the White House that anyone from the campaign had discussions with the Russians. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” Trump said on Feb. 20. “To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”
When Sessions was asked at Thursday’s news conference whether he and the ambassador had discussed Trump or the upcoming election, he said, “I don’t recall.” Ambassadors, he added, are typically “pretty gossipy” and “this was in campaign season, but I don’t recall any specific political discussions,” he said.
At Sessions’ confirmation hearing, Franken asked him about a CNN report that after the election intelligence briefers had told President Barack Obama and Trump that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising information about Trump.
Franken also noted that the report indicated that surrogates for Trump and intermediaries for the Russian government continued to exchange information during the campaign. He asked Sessions what he would do if that report proved true.
Sessions replied that he was “not aware of any of those activities.” He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
On Thursday, Sessions said he did not view Kislyak’s visit as tied to his role in the Trump campaign, though he acknowledged, “I can’t speak for what the Russian ambassador may have had in his mind.”