Trump administration:
Nancy Pelosi leads charge calling for attorney general to step down over contacts with Russians.
WASHINGTON — Senior House Democrats are calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign after revelations that the former Alabama senator did not disclose during his Cabinet confirmation hearing meetings he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
“After lying under oath to Congress about his own communications with the Russians, the Attorney General must resign,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said in a statement released Wednesday night, adding that, “Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is also demanding a special counsel to investigate the Trump administration for ties to Russia, “given AG Sessions’ false statements about contacts with Russia.”
And House Oversight and Government Affairs ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., called for Sessions to resign. He criticized the attorney general for keeping “secret” his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, even after then-national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the same Kremlin official.
“When Senator Sessions testified under oath that ‘I did not have communications with the Russians,’ his statement was demonstrably false, yet he let it stand for weeks,” Cummings remarked in a statement. “Attorney General Sessions should resign immediately, and there is no longer any question that we need a truly independent commission to investigate this issue.”
In a statement following the report, Sessions denied he had met with “any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false,” he said.
Republicans were more cautious in their remarks, but there were signs that they could step up calls for an outside investigation of the Trump team’s ties to Russia as a result of the Sessions news. Right now, the probes are being handled by the House and Senate Intelligence panels, and the FBI is investigating what the intelligence community’s interference in the election to aid Trump, and the Trump team’s possible ties to Kremlin officials.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., said at a CNN town hall Wednesday night that if there is any substance to allegations regarding the Trump team and Russia, then Sessions cannot be the person to assess them.
“If there is something there and it goes up the chain of investigation, it is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make that decision about Trump,” Graham said, stressing that Sessions’ contacts with the Russian ambassador could have been “innocent.”