Sen. Al Franken declined to say that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to him when Sessions said during his confirmation hearing he had no contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, which later proved to be incorrect.
“Lie is knowingly telling an untruth. I would like to give him some benefit of the doubt,” the Democratic Minnesota senator said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. “If he lied knowingly then he committed perjury, so I don’t want to go there and definitively say that we should be prosecuting the attorney general.”
Sessions told Franken during his confirmation hearing that he didn’t have any contact, but news reports later revealed that he had been in touch with Russia’s U.S. ambassador twice in the run up to the 2016 election.
Sessions indicated his response was meant in the context of his role with the Trump campaign. He said he met with the ambassador as a senator, not a Trump campaign surrogate.
Franken said that Sessions should return to the Senate Judiciary Committee to clear this up.
Host Martha Raddatz asked Franken if there was anything wrong with Sessions meeting the Russian ambassador.
“It could be,” Franken replied.
