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AG Jeff Sessions Met With Russia In 2016, Did Not Disclose At Confirmation

By Nick Younker
Published on: 14:35 PST, Mar 1, 2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the Trump Administration may have just made the whole Russia scandal much worse now that new revelations have come up that he met with the Russian ambassador twice last year, but said he did not during his confirmation hearings earlier this year.

In a new report from The Washington Post, it appears as though intelligence officials and the Justice Department have now found out that Jeff Sessions, who was then a Senator and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, had met with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a time when the scandal about Russian involvement in the hacks of the DNC were at their highest levels.

In the report, which was obtained from members of the Justice Department, Senator Jeff Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in September last year, which was when all of the activity with the Russian hacks were taking place. What’s even more damaging about the meeting is that when The Washington Post reached out to other members of the Armed Service Committee, which includes Senator John McCain, those who replied to their request for comment said that they had not been in contact with Russia at a time when they said tensions with Moscow were quite strained.

At this time, it appears as though Senator Jeff Sessions was the only one who had taken meetings with the Russian Ambassador, which he did in both July and September last year.

This is a direct contradiction to what he testified to when he was undergoing the confirmation hearings to be Attorney General under President Donald Trump. When asked by Senator Al Franken what he would do if he found out that Donald Trump or anyone in his campaign had any contact or involvement with Russia, his answer was somewhat elusive, but seemed to satisfy Senator Franken when he said it.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Senator Jeff Sessions said at the time.

“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

The answer is, in fact, a direct contradiction of the now discovered truth, but there is a gray area in that response. Jeff Sessions was asked what he would do if he found out about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign, but when he met with the Russian Ambassador, he did so in his official capacity as a Senator on the Armed Services Committee.

A spokeswoman for Jeff Sessions said that his response was not false or misleading, assumingly because of the way the question was phrased. But there was another time when Senator Jeff Sessions was also asked a question about Russia in written form from Senator Patrick Leahy.

“Several of the President-elect’s (Donald Trump) nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy asked Jeff Sessions in a written question.

Jeff Sessions simply answered the question with, “No.”

There seems to be a major conflict interest in this situation with how to proceed forward. Jeff Sessions is now the Attorney General, which means he oversees the Justice Department and the F.B.I. There have been calls for Donald Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Russia scandal, but they have been met with apprehension and there has been no indication yet that Trump will move in that direction.

This seems to be a crucial moment for the Trump administration to take action. Jeff Sessions currently oversees the Justice Department and they are the ones who provided this information. It would be a conflict of interest for Jeff Sessions to oversee an organization that is investigating their superior for potentially perjuring himself at his own confirmation hearing.

[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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john mccain russia FBI jeff sessions Donald Trump
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