Thursday’s political battle over whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions should resign or recuse himself from any probe into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign stems from Sessions’ January 10 Senate confirmation hearing.
In that hearing, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Sessions what he would do if he discovered that anyone in the Trump campaign had contact with Russian officials during the campaign.
Democrats have said Sessions perjured himself by not saying in his reply that he had met twice with the Russian ambassador last year. But the Trump administration has said Sessions was answering a specific question about campaign-related meetings between Russia and the Trump campaign, and answered honestly that he was aware of none and that he “did not have communications with the Russians” in the context of the campaign.
The discussion went like this:
Sen. Franken:
“CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that quote ‘Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.’ These documents also allegedly say quote, ‘there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.'”
“Again, I’m telling you this is just coming out, so, you know. But, if it’s true it’s obviously extremely serious. And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions:
“Senator Franken, 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, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
