If there's one thing we know about administration officials of popular vote loser Donald Trump, it's that they never disclose anything unless they're forced to. As Sen. Chuck Schumer put it, "They'll only do the right thing when they're caught doing the wrong thing."
That's what led to Attorney General Jeff Sessions' concession to recuse himself from FBI investigations related to Russia's election hacking and its ties to the Trump campaign. But his effort to stanch the bleeding did little more than put a band-aid over a gaping wound. Here's a sampling of the lingering questions surrounding the meetings between Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak:
1) By his own account, Sessions was accompanied by three staffers at the meeting, so at least four people knew about it. Why then, if it was an inadvertent slip, did it take Sessions seven weeks from the time he originally testified that he had no Russia communications to correct the record? Hill staffers regularly pore over testimony to make certain it's accurate, alerting their boss to inconsistencies. Yet even after Michael Flynn resigned on Feb. 13 over his undisclosed contacts with Russia, Sessions failed to come forward with a correction. If he didn’t intentionally lie to the committee, why did he let it stand?
2) Even though Justice Department officials originally claimed that Sessions didn't have "a strong recollection" of the meeting, at Thursday’s press conference he was suddenly full of amusing details about discussing a "church group" and terrorism and a "testy" exchange regarding Ukraine. But when it came to any mention of the campaign, Sessions offered only: "I don't recall." So Sessions apparently recovered more than just the scant details of that conversation, but somehow anything relating to campaign talk still escapes him. Hmm. Maybe he should ask those three staffers.
3) Sessions did inject one notable new detail into the sphere of unanswered questions: "Somehow the subject of the Ukraine came up," he said. Really? Do tell. Could it be that three short days earlier President Obama had announced the U.S. wouldn't be easing sanctions on Russia due to its involvement in (drum roll, please) Ukraine? And while we're at it, where have we heard the word "sanctions" before? Oh yeah, just that whole Flynn resignation scandal.
Sessions’ recusal was really just the bare minimum he could offer up as a concession for keeping his job, but there remain far more questions than answers when it comes to his contacts with Russia.
One thing we did learn late Thursday is that Sessions used campaign funds to pay for his trip to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland where he met with the Russian ambassador—supposedly in his capacity as a senator not a campaign surrogate, according to the campaign. Yeah, so again with the questions.