Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed policy issues and campaign-related matters with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. during the 2016 presidential race, according to a report Friday night.
The Washington Post reported that intercepts of the conversations collected by U.S. intelligence agencies revealed that the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, told his bosses in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related policy issues with Sessions.
Sessions, then a foreign policy adviser to Trump and U.S. senator from Alabama, initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and later said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.
A U.S. official told the Post that Sessions has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.”
A former official said the intelligence shows that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions about Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and plans for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.
“I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said in March when he announced that he would recuse himself from overseeing the FBI’s probe of Russian interference in the election, and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
The Justice Department dismissed the Post’s reporting in a statement to the newspaper.
“Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that the Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
Trump, in an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, said he would never have chosen Sessions to be attorney general if he knew Sessions would later recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Trump also criticized Sessions for giving “bad answers” during his confirmation hearing about his Russia contacts.
After Sessions recused himself, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the Russia probe.
The conversations with Kislyak occurred in April and in July. The second discussion happened on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
Kislyak’s tenure as Russian ambassador ended last month.
