When a letter starts with “I write to supplement my January 10, 2017 testimony” you might think it’s going to acknowledge a mistake. But of course, Team Trump does not make mistakes. So Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee can’t possibly be read as any sort of admission of error. Instead it’s more of a note to the committee explaining how he was right all along.
Sessions begins by addressing his response to Sen. Al Franken’s question about how Sessions would handle it if he found that someone on the Trump campaign had been in touch with Russian officials. Rather than answer Franken’s actual question, Sessions instead volunteered that:
“I’ve been called a surrogate, and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
Since that day, we’ve learned that Sessions did twice meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, including a one-on-one meeting in Sessions’ office that was apparently unique and for which Sessions has still not produced notes, despite claiming that multiple aides were present.
So how does Sessions’ letter handle the fact that he said he’d not communicated with the Russians, when he had? This is how.
My answer was correct.
Sessions not only goes on to excuse himself for “communications I had with the Russian ambassador over the years,” even though both the meetings in question were in 2016, but he also restates Franken’s question in a way that makes it possible for Sessions obviously incorrect answer to be, almost, reasonable.
Sen. Franken has a slightly different view.
Stop bending, Senator. Sessions has already tied logic into knots. Don’t try to follow.
What about the separate written question where Sessions also stated that he had not contact with the Russians? The simple “no” Sessions answered there gets a different kind of no this time. As in “no answer.”
Instead he spends time explaining why he didn’t bother to update the record until the information on his Kislyak meeting went public, even though Sessions and his staff must have been aware of his alternate-correctness immediately.
The letter asks why I did not supplement the record to note any contact with the Russian ambassador before its disclosure. Having considered my answer responsive, and no one having suggested otherwise, there was no need for a supplemented answer.
Which has to go down with the great answers of all time. Why did you not correct your lie before you were caught in it? Because you hadn’t caught me yet.