Sessions refuses to reveal his talks with Trump before Comey firing
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a Senate panel Wednesday that he would not answer questions about his conversations with President Donald Trump leading up to the firing of former FBI Director James B. Comey, saying he considered them confidential.
Sessions, the former senator from Alabama and 20-year member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is testifying before that panel for the first time since being confirmed as attorney general.
Democrats have made it clear they will once again press him for answers about his conversations with Trump and Comey in the days before Trump dismissed the FBI director in May.
In testimony earlier this year before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sessions said he and Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod J. Rosenstein agreed that Comey needed to go because of his decision to talk about the email investigation of Hillary Clinton — and his defense of it in Congress.
But Sessions would not answer Wednesday when Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, asked whether Trump actually fired Comey to remove a cloud created by the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
“That calls for a communication I’ve had with the president, and I believe it remains confidential,” Sessions said. Pressed by Feinstein about whether that meant Trump did say something about Russia, Sessions said he “cannot confirm or deny the existence of any communication with the president that I consider confidential.”
Sessions says he needs to protect a tradition of confidential conversations between the president and aides. But Trump has not formally invoked executive privilege, which might force a legal confrontation between the White House and Congress.
Last week, the Democratic senators on the committee sent a letter to Sessions, warning him that they expected he “will answer members’ questions fully and truthfully” or invoke the privilege.
The committee’s Republican chairman also indicated that he wants to probe further into the reasons for Comey’s firing. “The American people have a right to know why he was fired, especially in the middle of so many high-profile investigations,” Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said in opening remarks.
Sessions’ shifting statements on his conversations with Russian officials sparked sharp exchanges as Democrats pressed him on whether he misled the committee in previous testimony. In January, Sessions testified that he “did not have communication” with Russian officials, but news accounts later revealed three meetings with the former Russian ambassador. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., pressed Sessions on whether he had given “false testimony.”
Sessions said he had understood the questions as senators wanting to know if he had talked with Russians about interfering in the election.