Trying to trust Sessions
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, having been caught in a misrepresentation if not outright lie under oath, held onto his post Thursday by correctly recusing himself from any Justice Department investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. The action is begrudging and belated, and it is telling that it came just minutes after President Trump himself said a recusal was unnecessary and, bizarrely, that Sessions had “probably” told the truth in under-oath committee hearings.
It should not have taken the white-hot glare of national scrutiny for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to admit to an obvious conflict in overseeing a probe into a campaign in which he participated.
But, barring new information that undermines Sessions’ explanation of what actually happened, he thinly passes the credibility test for now.
Sessions, a longtime Alabama senator and a top Trump surrogate, met twice during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. One meeting seemed to be fairly incidental; the other was a private Sept. 8 sitdown in his Senate office.
Yet in January nomination hearings, when Sen. Al Franken asked Sessions what he would do if he discovered evidence that anyone on Team Trump had communicated with the Russian government during the campaign, Sessions answered:
“I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.”
That was false. In a Thursday appearance before the press, Sessions admitted as much, saying the meeting slipped his mind because the question put by Franken took him off guard.
That is difficult to believe, given the importance of the Russia issue, then and now. But for the moment, take him at his word.
Sessions further said the meeting in his office, also attended by two of his senior Senate staffers, was requested by Kislyak, making him one in a long line of ambassadors who’d stopped by to visit. Could the sudden diplomatic interest in the Alabaman happen to have been due to the fact that he was seen as the conduit to the Trump campaign and future administration? Oh, shucks.
Sessions proceeded to mention a few topics that came up, Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine among them. The attorney general said the conversation grew a bit contentious, ending with an offer for lunch that Sessions never followed up on.
According to Sessions’ fresh recollection, the election perhaps only came up incidentally — and there was no sharing of information or collaboration of any kind.
One piece of this strains credulity: that the election was a footnote, not a topic of conversation.
Sept. 8, when Sessions and Kislyak sat down, was a moment of intense scrutiny of the relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Three days earlier, the Washington Post had dropped a bombshell that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies were investigating what they believed to be a broad covert Russian operation to sow public distrust in the presidential election.
In a televised forum one day earlier, Trump had praised Putin for being a leader “far more than our President.” That same day in Washington, House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Putin was an “adversary” who was “conducting statesponsored cyberattacks.”
Sessions is saying that, while all these winds whipped, the Russian ambassador simply stopped by for a spot of tea and a brief chat.
It is a tough line for us to swallow. The best proof of the attorney general’s integrity will be an exhaustive and independent investigation into Trump campaign and transition ties with Russia.
It must go wherever the facts lead, however powerful the official or officials ultimately implicated.