A slight majority of American voters believe that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings and that he should resign from his position, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.
Fifty-two percent of voters, according to the poll, said that Sessions lied during his confirmation hearings, as opposed to 40 percent who do not and 8 percent who didn’t know or didn’t answer. Similarly, 51 percent think Sessions should resign, versus 42 percent who think he should keep his job and 7 percent who didn’t know or didn’t answer.
“As you may know, during his Cabinet confirmation hearing, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that he did not have any communications with Russian officials while working with the Trump campaign,” Quinnipiac’s full question about Sessions’ testimony to the Judiciary Committee said. “It has since been revealed that he did meet with the Russian ambassador when he was a Senator on the Armed Services Committee and a top advisor for the Trump campaign. Do you think he lied under oath about this issue, or do you think he made an unclear statement without lying?”
Sessions has since recused himself from all matters relating to the Trump campaign. And he attempted to clarify his comments about contacts with Russia in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.
Sessions wrote in that letter, referring to his claims under oath: “I did not mention communications I had had with the Russian Ambassador over the years because the question did not ask about them,” adding later, “I do not recall any discussions with the Russian Ambassador, or any other representative of the Russian government, regarding the political campaign on these occasions or any other occasions.”
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,323 voters nationwide from March 2-6 on landline and cell phones. The poll’s results have a margin of error is 2.7 percentage points.
