Democrats pile on Sessions

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Sessions is now “not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country and must resign.”

And while Republicans have said Sessions can recuse himself from any Russia-related investigations, Pelosi argued Thursday morning that “we are far past recusal.”

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the former Alabama Senator testified: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in [Trump’s] campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians.”

According to a Washington Post report published Wednesday, Sessions spoke twice with Sergey Kislyak, including a private conversation in September in the senator’s office when he was an adviser to the Trump presidential campaign.

An aide to Sessions said one of the meetings was brief after a public event, and the other was in his office but only dealt with issues related to his role as a senator.

Sessions, in a statement a spokeswoman tweeted late Wednesday, said: “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

But Democrats said it was another misstep related to Russia that only raises more questions. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, also called for Sessions to resign immediately after the revelations. He noted that former national security adviser to President Trump, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was also fired by Trump for misleading the administration on his contact with Russia.

Sessions’ testimony to the Senate committee was “demonstrably false — yet he let it stand for weeks,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Attorney General sessions should resign immediately.”

In a statement on Facebook, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., whose questioning of Sessions sparked the current controversy, said there is now a “dark cloud over the Trump administration.”

If the Post report is true, Franken says he is “very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.”

“It’s clearer than ever now that the attorney general […] must recuse himself immediately” from an investigation into the Trump-Russian connection, Franken argued.

Amy Klobuchar, Franken’s fellow Democratic senator from Minnesota, added, “Now more than ever we need a special prosecutor to look into all contacts with Russian officials.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee also said Sessions should recuse himself from any investigation.

“If reports are accurate,” Schiff said in a statement, “it is essential that he recuse himself from any role in the investigation of Trump campaign ties to the Russians. This is not even a close call: it is a must.”

Given Sessions’ “false statements about contacts with Russian officials, we need a special counsel to investigate Trump associates’ ties to Russia,” the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement on Twitter.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for both a resignation and a special prosecutor, writing in an extensive series of tweets: “We need a special prosecutor totally independent of the AG.”

Warren added in another: “[W]e need Attorney General Jeff Sessions – who should have never been confirmed in the first place – to resign. We need it now.”

Warren was one of the most vocal opponents to Sessions’ AG nomination. She was now infamously cut off by Senate Republicans from reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King urging the Senate to reject Sessions’ then-nomination as a federal judge.

Democratic lawmakers asking Sessions to recuse:

• Rep. Adam Schiff, California
• Sen. Al Franken, Minnesota
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota
• Sen. Brian Schatz, Hawaii
• Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California
• Rep. Linda Sánchez, California
• Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont
• Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon

Democratic lawmakers asking Sessions to resign: