US attorney general under pressure to quit
REPUBLICANS JOIN DEMOCRATS IN CALLING ON SESSIONS TO RECUSE HIMSELF FROM RUSSIA PROBE
T he White House dismissed as a partisan attack Democratic calls for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign over allegations that he lied during his confirmation hearing about conversations he had with Russia’s ambassador to the US while serving as a prominent surrogate for Donald Trump’s campaign.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer joined House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in calling yesterday for Sessions to resign.
“Because the Department of Justice should be above reproach, for the good of the country, Attorney General Sessions should resign,” Schumer of New York said at a news conference in Washington. He also said Sessions may well become a subject of an investigation. “The information reported last night shows beyond a shadow of a doubt he cannot possibly lead an investigation into Russian interference in our elections let alone come close to it.”
The Justice Department confirmed on Wednesday that Sessions twice had contact last year with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Sessions testified during his Senate confirmation hearing January 10 that he had no contacts with Russian officials.
The revelation prompted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to join Democrats in calling on Sessions to recuse himself from any probes into Russian interference in the US election.
Sessions said yesterday he will recuse himself “whenever it’s appropriate”.
Donald Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions twice spoke with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential campaign.
The Washington Post, citing Justice Department officials, first reported that Sessions met with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak once in September 2016, when US intelligence officials were investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, and once in the summer of that year.
It was communications with Kislyak that led to the firing of Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in February.
A spokeswoman for Sessions confirmed that the meetings took place, but provided a statement from the attorney general saying they were not related to the election campaign.
“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” Sessions’ statement said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”
Sessions, a former senator from Alabama who was among Trump’s early and most vocal surrogates on the campaign trail, did not disclose the conversations when asked under oath during his Senate confirmation hearing in early 2017 about possible contacts between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, called for Sessions’ resignation. “After lying under oath to Congress about his own communications with the Russians, the attorney general must resign,” she said.
“Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer
of our country and must resign. There must be an independent, bipartisan, outside commission to investigate the Trump political, personal and financial connections to the Russians.”
The White House swiftly rejected the reports as an effort to undermine Trump’s speech before Congress on Tuesday night, which was reviewed favourably by the US media despite signalling no substantive shift in policy.
“This is the latest attack against the Trump administration by partisan Democrats,” a senior administration official said, according to CNN.
“Sessions met with the ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate armed services committee, which is entirely consistent with his testimony.”
When Sessions was asked during his January 10 testimony to the Senate judiciary committee about how he would respond if he learnt of communications between the Trump campaign and Russian officials leading up to the election, he said he was “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.”
While the committee was considering his nomination, the panel’s top Democrat, Senator Patrick Leahy, also raised the issue of communications with Russia in a written questionnaire.
“Several of the presidentelect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties,” Leahy wrote, before asking Sessions point-blank: “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after elec-