Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sessions says testimony on Russia correct
AG seeks to clarify denial in letter to senate committee
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought Monday to clarify his denial to the Senate about contact with Russian officials during the presidential campaign, testimony that led him to recuse himself from overseeing federal investigations into alleged meddling by the Kremlin in the U.S. election.
Reports that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador twice during the campaign sparked a storm of demands last week on Capitol Hill for the former senator from Alabama to recuse himself from the investigations or resign.
He announced his recusal on Thursday and promised to send a letter to clarify his January testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the letter, Sessions told his former colleagues that he had correctly answered a question when he said he “did not have communications with the Russians” during the campaign.
Sessions reiterated what he told reporters last week: that he had focused on part of the question posed by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., that sought to determine what the attorney general would do about any “continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump’s surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.”
Sessions said in the letter that he answered honestly.
“I did not mention communications I had had with the Russian ambassador over the years because the question did not ask about them,” Sessions wrote.
The FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees are investigating whether anyone in President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia’s government while the Kremlin was allegedly hacking Democratic Party computers and seeking to disrupt the campaign.
The issue has cast a cloud over the fledgling Trump administration, which has denied any improper contacts.
Trump ousted his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, last month for misleading the White House about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign.
The Justice Department disclosed last week that Sessions also met twice with Kislyak in 2016, first after a speech at the Republican National Convention in July and then in a private meeting in Sessions’ Senate office in September.
Justice Department officials have said that Sessions had conversations with more than two dozen foreign ambassadors and that his meeting with Kislyak was not unusual. They said he met the Russian diplomat in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not as a representative of the Trump campaign.
The day before his sitdown with the Russian, he met the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., for example, they said.
In comments to reporters, Sessions described his encounters with Kislyak as pro forma discussions. He described Kislyak as an “old-style, Soviet-type ambassador” and added that their conversation grew testy over Russia’s support for separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.
A U.S. intelligence report issued on Jan. 6, before Trump took office, assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the election-related meddling in an effort to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump.
FBI officials have not publicly discussed their investigation, and no evidence indicates that they have discovered wrongdoing by any Trump associate.
FBI surveillance of Russian operatives is routine and could have picked up Americans speaking or writing to Russians who were monitored by U.S. counterintelligence agencies.
Democrats have continued to seek answers from Sessions about his contacts with Kislyak.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, DCalif., the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, last week called on Sessions to answer questions in person from lawmakers and asked the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate Sessions’ testimony, his contacts with Russian officials and his decision to recuse himself.
Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, blocked a move to call Sessions to testify, saying that there were no plans to question Sessions until an annual oversight hearing in coming months.
Justice Department officials recommended that Sessions recuse himself, the attorney general said, because of his connection to Trump and the campaign. “I believe these recommendations are just and right,” he said.