The most strident Trump critics have a problem. There’s no evidence Jeff Sessions, the attorney general and former Alabama senator, colluded with Russian officials to sway the election toward Donald Trump. This was the implication of questions from Democratic senators at Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence committee hearing regarding a previously undisclosed meeting of Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
The “bombshell” meeting supposedly occurred at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in April 2016, following a major foreign policy speech by Trump, then a candidate for president. Fired FBI director James Comey insinuated during his testimony last week that there was something “problematic” which was a factor in Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. A leak from the closed session with Comey suggested that this problematic factor was the Mayflower meeting with Kislyak.
But Sessions denied this, on the record, testifying that he did not recall seeing Kislyak at the Mayflower in April 2016 and did not have any significant or notable meeting with the ambassador. Furthermore, he went on the offensive and denied the broader implication.
“Let me state this clearly: I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States,” Sessions said. “Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, at least some of you, and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion, that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government, to hurt this country which I have served with honor for 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie.”
There may never be any hard evidence that any high-level Trump campaign or administration officials, wittingly or unwittingly, colluded with the Russians. Indeed, this is what both the Senate investigation and the special counsel investigation, headed by Robert Mueller, are supposed to suss out.
But the Trump administration has a problem as well, which is that there is evidence the president tried to impede or interfere in these investigations. And Sessions did little to dispel this evidence.
In his Tuesday testimony, Sessions was unable to provide any more context to this question: Did Trump fire Comey because of, or in response to, the FBI director’s refusal to “let go” of the investigation into Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Flynn? Because this question has gotten reasonably complicated.
Trump’s personal counsel, Marc Kasowitz, has denied Comey’s claims that Trump asked Comey for a loyalty oath and asked him to “let go” of Flynn.
And Sessions (along with his deputy, Rod Rosenstein) recommended that Trump fire Comey for reasons unrelated to the Russia and Flynn investigations. Pressed on this by senators on the Intelligence committee, Sessions pointed out that his recommendation to Trump on Comey was based in turn on a recommendation from Rosenstein. And that Rosenstein’s rationale was that Comey had poorly handled the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Sessions repeatedly stated Tuesday that his recommendation that Trump fire Comey did not conflict with his recusal from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation. So far so good.
The only problem is that these two accounts do not square with what Trump has said publicly about his decision to fire Comey. Trump told NBC News’s Lester Holt days after he fired Comey, he did so because of the “Russia thing.”
And when this contradiction was placed in front him at Tuesday’s hearing, Sessions was unable to provide an answer.
