Tough questions are expected to be asked of Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he faces the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. The questions are likely to focus on his meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign period.
Included in the anticipated questions for Sessions, which the AG said will be public, is a possible third meeting with Russian Ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak that Session did not disclose when he applied for a security clearance, Reuters reported. He will be required to answer questions about his January testimony, according to Democratic Sen.
Dianne Feinstein.
Not part of Trump campaign
In January, during the hearing for Session’s nomination as AG, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that as part of the Trump campaign, he did not have contact with Russian officials. According to a Department of Justice spokesman, Sessions was honest in his answer because he met Kislyak as a senator and not a member of the Trump campaign.
Sessions’ name was mentioned by fired FBI Director James Comey in his June 8 testimony. Comey asked the AG not to leave him alone in a room with President Donald Trump after the president allegedly told the director to drop the FBI’s investigation on Michael Flynn, the ex-National Security Adviser.
Comey also predicted that Sessions would recuse himself from the FBI probe because of his failure to disclose to in his security application, meetings with Kislyak Congress.
His recusal reportedly angered Trump which led to speculations that the AG offered to quit his post.
Cordial relationship after 12 years of friendship
The Washington Post reported that at Trump’s cabinet meeting on Monday when he asked secretaries and senior staff to say something good about the president on camera, the two men were cordial.
The AG even said he was honored to serve Trump.
Their friendship began in 2005 when Sessions, a junior senator then from Alabama, used Trump’s comment in a speech on the Senate floor, that the price of the planned new headquarters for the UN was outrageous. Sessions invited Trump to be a witness at a hearing of a subcommittee on the renovation of the UN office and that started the friendship between the two men that now spans 12 years.
Trump claimed he went to see Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN then, to offer to build a new UN headquarters at a fraction of the renovation cost, but he was rejected. He proposed a 90-floor residential tower for $350 million, while the UN allocated an amount four times bigger.
