Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify Tuesday in an open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., confirmed that Sessions’ testimony will be public beginning at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.
The Department of Justice said earlier Monday that Sessions requested the testimony be public for “the American people to hear the truth.”
Sessions “believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him and looks forward to answering the committee’s questions tomorrow,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.
Sessions offered over the weekend to testify on Tuesday, even though no hearing had been set at the time. Sessions argued that it was better to address issues raised by former FBI Director James Comey in the Intelligence Committee, and not the Appropriations Committee hearings he was scheduled for.
That move angered Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, who wanted Sessions to testify, not his deputy.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will instead go before the House and Senate subcommittees to discuss the department’s budget requests for the upcoming fiscal year.
Last week, Comey told Senators in a closed-door meeting that the FBI had been looking into whether Sessions had a third, undisclosed meeting with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the 2016 presidential election. During that time, Sessions was still a senator, but advising President Trump on foreign policy.
The Justice Department has denied that such a meeting happened.
