Sessions’ testimony a ‘high stakes’ test
A former United States senator may hold the key to the dispute between US president Donald Trump and former FBI director James Comey. Sari Horwitz and Karoun Demirjian report.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ appearance today before the Senate Intelligence Committee will be a high-stakes test for a Trump official who has become a central figure in the scandal engulfing the White House over Russia and the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director but has so far kept a low profile.
Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama, will face tough questions from his former colleagues.
Democrats plan to ask about his contacts during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, which the attorney general failed to disclose fully during his confirmation hearing.
They also want him to explain his role in the firing of Comey, despite the attorney general’s recusal in March from the Russia investigation following revelations of his meetings with Kislyak.
‘‘If, as the president said, I was fired because of the Russia investigation, why was the attorney general involved in that chain?’’ Comey said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.
Sessions also is likely to face questions about Comey’s cryptic assertion that the FBI knew of a ‘‘problematic’’ reason that Sessions should not oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Democratic lawmakers are skeptical that Sessions will divulge any explosive new details, especially since the attorney general could assert executive privilege regarding any questions about conversations with the president.
But they hope the hearing offers a chance to at least get Sessions on the record as either answering or dodging answers about pivotal events related to Comey and the FBI’s investigation.
‘‘There are many unanswered and troubling questions, so the attorney general needs to be forthcoming,’’ said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). ‘‘The Senate and the American people deserve to know exactly what involvement with the Russian investigation he had before his recusal, what safeguards are in place to prevent his meddling, and why he felt it was appropriate to recommend the firing of Director Comey when he was leading that investigation.’’
For the embattled attorney general, the hearing will be the first time he is questioned by senators since January, when he testified during his confirmation hearing that he did not communicate with any Russian officials during the presidential campaign, when Sessions acted as an adviser to Trump.
As the White House’s political crisis over the Russia investigation has grown, the attorney general has laid low. While Sessions used to frequently answer questions from reporters after public appearances discussing his criminal justice initiatives, he stopped in late April, just before Comey was dismissed.
Sessions was originally scheduled to testify about the Justice Department budget before the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees. At the weekend, he wrote to the chairmen of both committees and said he was sending his deputy attorney general to testify in his place. He said that he would testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee instead, though it was unclear initially if the hearing would be open or closed to the public. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) have since announced that the hearing would be public.
‘‘The Attorney General has requested that this hearing be public,’’ Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement. ‘‘He believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him and looks forward to answering the committee’s questions tomorrow.’’
No time has been scheduled for Sessions to testify separately in a closed hearing to discuss classified matters, according to Senate aides, who were not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.
Comey’s testimony last week revealed new avenues of inquiry that lawmakers are likely to pursue. The former FBI director said he contacted Sessions after a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office where Sessions and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, were asked to leave and Comey was alone with the president.
During that meeting, Comey said Trump asked him to stop investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had been forced to resign the day before after failing to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador.
‘‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,’’ Comey quoted Trump as saying. ‘‘He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.’’
After the meeting, Comey told Sessions that he did not want to be alone anymore with Trump and ‘‘it can’t happen that you get kicked out of the room and the president talks to me’’.
‘‘I have a recollection of him just kind of looking at me,’’ Comey testified. ‘‘I kind of got – his body language gave me the sense like, ‘What am I going to do?’ . . . He didn’t say anything.’’
Ian Prior, a Justice Department spokesman, disputed that account and said that Sessions replied to Comey and said he ‘‘wanted to ensure that he and his FBI staff were following proper communications protocol with the White House’’. Trump’s personal lawyer also challenged Comey’s account, saying the president never asked for the investigation to be dropped.
Sessions had a remarkable path to the attorney general post. He was an early and vocal supporter of Trump during the campaign, when most Republican lawmakers dismissed the candidate. He arrived in the job in February eager to launch ambitious efforts to combat violent crime and deport undocumented immigrants.
But officials said Sessions’s relationship with Trump has been strained since the attorney general recused himself from the Russia probe in March. Officials said that Sessions at one point offered to resign. The Washington Post The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe and Adam Entous contributed to this report.
UNITED STATES: A close personal friend of Donald Trump has raised the politically explosive possibility that the US president could take action to fire Robert Mueller, the recently appointed special counsel tasked with looking into Russian meddling in last year’s election and potential collusion with the Trump campaign.
‘‘I think he’s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel,’’ Christopher Ruddy said during an appearance on PBS’s NewsHour. ’’I think he’s weighing that option.’’
Ruddy, who is chief executive of Newsmax Media and a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, confirmed his view in a text message to The Washington Post but did not elaborate.
Ruddy told PBS that he thought it would be ‘‘a very significant mistake’’ for Trump to seek Mueller’s termination.
Ruddy appears to have based his assessment on comments made by a member of Trump’s personal legal team. During an appearance on ABC News’s This Week, Jay Sekulow said he was ‘‘not going to speculate’’ on whether the president might order the firing of Mueller, but added that he ‘‘can’t imagine the issue is going to arise’’.
Trump does have the authority to remove the special counsel. Muller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and Trump could order Rosenstein to fire him, or he could order that regulations that govern the appointment be repealed and then fire Mueller himself.
Such an action would be politically perilous. Former president Richard Nixon’s attempt to remove a special prosecutor during his tenure led to the resignations of two top Justice Department officials amid the Watergate scandal.
The prospect floated by Ruddy puts Rosenstein in an awkward position. He is scheduled to testify before two congressional hearings today, and is likely to face even more pointed questions about the Russia probe and the independence of the Justice Department in light of Ruddy’s comments.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is also scheduled to testify today before the Senate Intelligence Committee, a venue where the possibility of firing Mueller could arise. Sessions has recused himself from the Russia probe, a move that gave Rosenstein the authority to appoint a special counsel.
National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers met behind closed doors yesterday with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senators made it clear that they want Rogers to answer questions about any possible interference by Trump in the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. He and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats refused to answer those questions last week in a public hearing.
Sessions will testify publicly before the panel in a hastily scheduled hearing just days after fired FBI director James Comey last week accused Trump of lying about his dismissal and pressuring him to end an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In a sign of how damaging the administration considers Comey’s testimony to be, Sessions volunteered to appear before the panel. However, in a move that could infuriate lawmakers, he has told the committee he will refuse to discuss his conversations with the president, according to a person familiar with Sessions’ plan.
Asked if Sessions will claim that some of his conversations are subject to executive privilege and won’t be shared with Congress, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said yesterday: ‘‘I think it depends on the scope of the questions, and to get into a hypothetical at this point would be premature.’’
- Washington Post, Bloomberg