Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was the first lawmaker in Congress to call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign from his Cabinet position after a report released Wednesday alleged the former senator met twice with a Russian official during the election.
“It is inconceivable that even after Michael Flynn was fired for concealing his conversations with the Russians that Attorney General Sessions would keep his own conversations secret for several more weeks.
“When Senator Sessions testified under oath that ‘I did not have communications with the Russians,’ his statement was demonstrably false, yet he let it stand for weeks — and he continued to let it stand even as he watched the President tell the entire nation he didn’t know anything about anyone advising his campaign talking to the Russians,” Cummings said in a statement released late Wednesday.
The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee added that Sessions should “resign immediately” because there is no longer “any question” that there is need for an independent commission to investigate the issue.
Sessions spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on two occasions during the presidential election last year despite testifying before the Senate that he had not had any contact with Russian officials during the campaign.
The former Alabama senator and then-foreign policy adviser to Trump first talked with Kislyak in July following an event at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. A small group of ambassadors had approached Sessions after the event and Kislyak spoke individually with Sessions at that time. Then in September, Kislyhak met Sessions at his office on Capitol Hill.
