If there was any doubt whatsoever that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself immediately from the investigation into whether the Trump campaign and Russian officials had any contact or agreements, those have completely evaporated with this news:
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.
Emphasis added because, you think? Jeff Sessions straight up lied:
And this isn’t Jeff Sessions’ only connection to Russia and the Trump campaign:
In March, in a bold “Oh yeah?” moment during an interview with the Washington Post’s editorial board, Donald Trump took the paper’s dare and revealed, then and there, his very short list of foreign policy advisers. There were just five, though he said, “I have quite a few more.” The list was a head-scratcher, a random assortment of obscure and questionable pundits. One of the names, offered without elaboration, was, “Carter Page, PhD.”
Who is Carter Page? A shadowy investor with deep Russian ties:
I was not the only one. Seemingly everyone I talked to had also talked to the Washington Post, and then there were these corporate investigators who drew a dark and complex web of Page’s connections. Then there was Page, praising Putin. I found myself juggling two mutually contradictory Page narratives: Was Page, like Manafort, followed by a long train of sordid dealings with dark and powerful players with deep pockets and deep resentments toward the West? This was the person described by the corporate investigators trying to whisper into my ear. Was Page a man wheeling and dealing in energy contracts with China and Turkmenistan, who was a vehicle for the Kremlin to influence the American election? Was he a man who, during a three-day trip to Moscow, met with two of Russia’s most powerful men and was now being investigated for it?
And how did Carter Page get introduced to Team Trump? All roads lead back to Jeff Sessions:
One source suggested to me that Richard Burt, former U.S. ambassador to Germany, START treaty negotiator, and longtime lobbyist for Alfa Bank, was the nexus. It was Burt who helped draft Trump’s foreign policy speech in April, and had been advising the Trump campaign, via Senator Jeff Sessions, on foreign policy. But when I met Burt at his office at the McLarty Associates lobbying shop, he looked at me and said he had never even met him. “The only person I talked to about Carter Page is this guy at the Washington Post,” Burt told me. “And I told him I’d never met the guy. Let me put it this way: if I have met him, I’ve forgotten. He’s the former Merrill Lynch guy, right?”
Someone else told me that the Page connection was Rick Dearborn, Sessions’ chief of staff, who hired Page because Dearborn knew nothing about foreign policy but needed to put together a foreign policy staff for Trump’s Alexandria, Virginia, policy shop and he happened to know Page. But Dearborn wouldn’t return my calls, and someone who once worked for that policy shop told me it was neither Dearborn nor Burt, but campaign co-chair Sam Clovis who recruited Page. “If he was part of that original group of people, I can say with 70 percent confidence it was Sam Clovis,” this person told me.
Hell yes there needs to be a Congressional investigation and special counsel to investigate. Now. Yesterday. And tomorrow.
