White House press secretary Sean Spicer ripped Democrats on Thursday who have accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of perjuring himself during his confirmation hearing by declining to disclose interactions he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kisylak.
“He was 100 percent straight with the committee and I think people are choosing to play partisan politics and they should be ashamed of themselves,” Spicer told Fox News.
At his Jan. 10 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions was asked whether any Trump campaign associates had been in contact with Russian officials during the course of the president’s campaign.
“I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians,” he told Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.
Spicer said Sessions was “straight” with committee members and “did acknowledge that he met in his capacity as United States senator on the Armed Services Committee with the [Russian] ambassador on a couple occasions, one being after he’d given a speech and someone approached him.”
“And as you’ve seen, senators like Ted Cruz have come out and said this is a perfectly normal course of business,” Spicer noted, adding that Democrats have continued “to push a false narrative for political purposes.”
Trump’s top spokesman also rejected the idea that Sessions should recuse himself from any Justice Department investigations involving Trump aides and Russia.
“There was nothing he should recuse,” he said.
Several Republican lawmakers, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, have urged Sessions to “clarify his testimony” from the Jan. 10 hearing and recuse himself from any Russia-related probes.
“I think, for the trust of the American people, you recuse yourself in these situations,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told MSNBC earlier Thursday morning. “I just think for any investigation going forward, you want to make sure everybody trusts the investigation … that there’s no doubt within the investigation.”
