Attorney General Jeff Sessions is in a hard place these days. Two days after President Donald Trump said he did not like the AG accepting the job and then recusing himself from the Russia probe, Sessions took another hit. This time, it came from an intelligence report that indicated Sessions possibly lied during his confirmation hearing, The New York Daily News reported.
Sessions then denied that the topic of discussion he had with Russian Ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak was about the 2016 election. At that time, he was an Alabama senator and part of the Trump campaign.
He also insisted that he met Kislyak only once, although Sessions later admitted he could have met the Russian envoy more than once.
Protecting an unappreciative president
The AG, who did not fully disclosed details of his meeting with Kislyak, could be trying to protect Trump who is already under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice. Trump, however, appears not to appreciate the seemingly cover up done by the AG as beside the public scolding, he said Sessions’ recusing himself from the Russian investigation was “unfair to the president.”
Now that Sessions is out of the picture to help Trump escape the mess caused by his campaign team’s apparent collusion with Russia, the president is exploring other legal options to extricate his campaign staff and family, including pardoning himself, a New York Daily News report said.
Contradicted by other evidence
Sessions told a Senate committee in his testimony a few weeks ago that the conversation with Kislyak was not political. The Washington Post, however, reported that intercepted communications by U.S. intelligence agencies said otherwise. His discussions with the ambassador included Washington-Moscow diplomatic relationship under a Trump presidency.
(THREAD) I first wrote of Sessions having contact with Kislyak at the Mayflower in March. WaPo is now confirming it. Read on for details. pic.twitter.com/l92qmfFnwF
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) July 22, 2017
The cover-ups, by the AG and the president, were apparently done to downplay the assessment by several U.S. intelligence agencies that there was collusion between the Trump campaign camp and Russians to make Trump, the Republican candidate, win over rival Hillary Clinton, the Democratic bet.
On Friday, John Brennan, the former director of CIA, said that Trump’s effort to belittle the assessment of American intelligence agencies on Russsian meddling is disgraceful. He cited Trump’s statement one day before the American president met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg that no one knows for sure if Russians, indeed, interfered in 2016. “These types of comments are just disgraceful … and the person who said them should be ashamed of himself,” Reuters quoted Brennan.
