Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted Thursday that he should have told the Senate Judiciary Committee in January that he met with the Russian ambassador twice last year.
“In retrospect, I should have slowed down and said I did meet with one Russian official a couple of times, and that was the Russian ambassador,” Sessions said Thursday at a press conference.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Sessions in January what he would do if it became clear that Trump surrogates and Russian intermediaries were exchanging information. Sessions replied, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
Sessions and the Trump administration said his answer was honest and that it was meant to answer the question about campaign contacts. Sessions said Thursday that his answer was honest but incomplete, and said he would supplement the answer in a written statement to the Senate soon.
“My reply to the question of Sen. Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time,” Sessions explained.
Sessions denied that any of the conversations he had with Russian officials — specifically Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — were about the Trump presidential campaign. The former Alabama senator spoke with Kislyak twice in 2016, including in September amid suspicions that Russians hacked Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
According to Sessions, he made his decision to recuse himself from any current or future investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election after meeting with Justice Department officials in the less-than-24-hours since the revelations.
