During his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jefferson Sessions was asked about any meetings with Russians.
[Sessions] was asked by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee if he had met with Russian officials during the course of the 2016 campaign. He claimed that he had not—in response to a written question from the senior Democrat on the Committee, Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, and then under questioning from Minnesota Senator Al Franken.
Yeah. Funny thing: Sessions was lying. He not only had a meeting with Russians over the period of the campaign and transition, he had several. This included a lengthy private meeting with former Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak inside Sessions’ Senate office … a meeting Sessions first tried to blame on a Senate committee assignment.
This is the latest attack against the Trump administration by partisan Democrats. General Sessions met the ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, which is entirely consistent with his testimony.
Uh huh. Except that not only did “General” Sessions fail to mention this meeting, he is the only member of the Senate Armed Service Committee to have such a meeting. Apparently, other senators found it possible to plan for America’s defense without sharing their thoughts with Vladimir Putin’s representative.
And that wasn’t the only time that Sessions ran into the former Russian ambassador. He had at least two other supposedly passing encounters—all of which is making Sessions a focus for Robert Mueller.
One of Sessions’ forgotten meetings was on the occasion of Trump’s first “foreign policy speech” at the Mayflower Hotel, and another at the Republican National Convention. After others reminded him of the encounters, Sessions has admitted that he might have spoken “briefly” with Kislyak at those events.
The RNC event in particular seems to be drawing Mueller’s attention.
Mueller’s team has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russia’s U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general, said one source, who requested anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.
Along with another event that is directly tied to Donald Trump.
Another issue Mueller’s team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine, said another source who also requested anonymity.
At the time that these meetings were first revealed, there were calls from numerous quarters for Sessions to resign after having committed perjury in his hearing. Sessions denied the charges, putting the statements down to forgetting and that he was limiting the scope of his answers to his actions in support of Trump’s campaign.
The meetings between Sessions and Kislyak haven’t drawn much attention in recent months, and Trump has repeatedly waved off any connection between weakening the stance on Ukraine and his campaign.
But just because these items surfaced more than a year ago, it doesn’t mean that Robert Mueller has forgotten them.
On Thursday afternoon, Sessions announced that he was not now naming a second special counsel to investigate either the “Uranium One” deal or FBI actions around Hillary Clinton’s email, though he did mention that he had an investigator looking into these matters.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed Thursday that Utah's top federal prosecutor, John Huber, has been examining a cluster of Republican-driven accusations against the FBI and has decided that no second special counsel is needed -- at least for now.
How, or if, this announcement is related to Mueller’s renewed focus on Sessions isn’t yet clear.