Sessions Will Recuse Himself From Any Inquiry Into Trump Campaign
By Ken Bredemeier March 02, 2017
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would recuse himself from any investigations into President Donald Trump's campaign or investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Sessions spoke at an afternoon news conference Thursday after facing growing pressure to resign, or at least remove himself from his agency's investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in last year's presidential election.
Earlier Thursday, Trump said he has "total" confidence in Sessions.
The two top congressional Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, both demanded the attorney general's resignation after it became known that Sessions met twice last year with Moscow's ambassador to Washington, even though he testified at his January confirmation hearing that he had no contact with Russians.
Sessions, recently sworn in as the country's top law enforcement official after being one of Trump's top surrogates during the presidential campaign, told NBC News that "whenever it is appropriate," he would recuse himself from his agency's investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged links with Russian officials during the long presidential campaign.
Trump voiced his support for Sessions while on a trip to a naval warship based in Virginia. Both opposition Democrats and Republican allies of Sessions called for him to remove himself from the probe of Russian interference in the election.
Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told Fox News that Sessions "was 100 percent straight" with senators questioning him at his confirmation hearing. Spicer said Sessions, as a senator at the time, met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not as a representative of the Trump campaign.
Spicer accused Democrats of pushing "a false narrative for political purposes."
Sessions met Kislyak in July at an event on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention, and again in September at Sessions' Capitol Hill office.
Sessions' aides late Wednesday acknowledged the contacts with Kislyak, but said they were not meetings between the Trump campaign and Russia, but rather discussions Sessions held as a member of the Senate panel.
Sessions had testified under oath at his confirmation hearing, "I have been called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have, did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."
Democrats' reaction
Schumer said that because Sessions' agency, the Department of Justice, "should be above reproach, for the good of the country, Attorney General Sessions should resign." Pelosi accused Sessions of "lying under oath."
Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who asked Sessions at the confirmation hearings about any Russian contacts he had had, told CNN, "He made a bald statement, that during the campaign he had not met with the Russians. That's not true. It's extremely misleading at the most charitable."
Republicans' reaction
Some Republicans agreed with Democrats that Sessions should remove himself from any oversight of the probe into alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A key Republican, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, said, "It would be easier" for an investigation into ties between the Russian government and Trump's campaign if Sessions recused himself from it.
Another Republican, Congressman Jason Chaffetz, said Sessions should clarify his testimony and remove himself from the investigation.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Republican who served with Sessions on the Armed Services Committee, said during a CNN town hall event Wednesday that an independent investigator should be in charge of the probe.
"It is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make this decision about Trump," Graham said. "There may be nothing there, but if there's something there, if the FBI believes there's criminal nature, then for sure you need a special prosecutor."
Flynn and Russia links
Trump's new administration has already seen the resignation of his first national security adviser over alleged links to Russia. Trump ousted Michael Flynn after just 24 days on the job after information emerged that he had lied to top officials about the nature of his own conversations with the Russian ambassador.
Trump has denied multiple reports that people connected to his campaign had connections with members of the Russian government during the election season.
Aside from the White House, Sessions had other defenders, too.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who unsuccessfully fought Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, told MSNBC that Sessions' testimony was "unfortunate. He didn't speak as clearly as he should have."
Cruz, however, said, "Context is important. The underlying meeting [with the Russian ambassador] is a nothing burger. The underlying meeting is simply doing his job. That's part of being a senator."
Russian probes
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is part of the Justice Department that Sessions heads, is probing alleged Russian activities aimed at disrupting the U.S. election to help Trump win, and any possible links between the Trump campaign and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is carrying out its own probe, and the House Intelligence Committee announced parameters for its investigation Wednesday.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded last year that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump defeat former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate.
They said Moscow hacked into the computer of Clinton's campaign chief. Then, the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks released thousands of the emails found on the computer in the weeks before the election showing embarrassing, behind-the-scenes efforts by Democratic officials to help Clinton win the party's presidential nomination.
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