Attorney General Jeff Sessions should not cancel his appearance before the House and Senate spending panels, top Democratic appropriators said Monday, after Sessions opted to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee instead.
“We are disappointed Attorney General Sessions has cancelled — for the second time — his scheduled testimony to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees,” House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and senior committee member Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “Instead of two hearings open to the public, the attorney general will participate in only one with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which may be closed to the public.”
Sessions backed out of testifying before the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, telling members in a letter that the Senate Intelligence Committee “is the most appropriate forum” to address his meetings last year with Russian officials. Sessions made the decision, he said, when members of the Appropriations Committees said they planned to focus their questions on those meetings, rather than on Justice Department spending issues in the panel’s jurisdiction.
Sessions will send Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in his place. Democrats are not happy with the decision.
“This flies in the face of any standards of transparency, openness, and good government,” Lowey and Serrano said. “The attorney general should engage in open, public questioning at the appropriations committee like every other Cabinet secretary does.”
