In the wake of the revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador twice during the 2016 campaign, the Justice Department and White House on Thursday both made the case Sessions did nothing wrong in holding the meetings and then failing to disclose them during his confirmation proceedings.
In the Washington Post’s original report on the meetings, Justice Department officials confirmed that the former Alabama senator encountered Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice during the 2016 campaign. The DOJ officials told the Post that Sessions did not believe the meetings were relevant to questions he was asked at his confirmation hearing, and that Sessions did not recall what was discussed.
Sessions told Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who asked him about contact between Trump aides Russian officials during his confirmation hearing, that he personally did “not have communications with the Russians.” Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Sessions, said that there was nothing “misleading” about that response.
The White House quickly went to bat for Sessions, too, decrying reports about the meetings as an attack from Democrats and declaring that the former key Trump surrogate had been “straight” with the Senate during the confirmation process.
In its first response to the revelations, the White House issued a statement from an unnamed official blasting the news about Sessions as a “partisan” attack.
“This is the latest attack against the Trump Administration by partisan Democrats,” the official said. “General Sessions met with the ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is entirely consistent with his testimony. It’s no surprise Senator Al Franken is pushing this story immediately following President Trump’s successful address to the nation.”
As calls mounted for Sessions to recuse himself from any FBI or Justice Department probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election, the White House would not concede that Sessions’ meetings or his failure to disclose them could be cause for concern.
“He was 100 percent straight with the committee, and I think that people who are choosing to play partisan politics with this should be ashamed of themselves,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in an interview on “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning.
Asked if Sessions should recuse himself from a Russia probe, Spicer said, “There’s nothing to recuse himself.”
It appears the reports about Sessions’ encounters with the Russian ambassador may have caught the White House off guard. An unnamed senior administration official told CNN that the White House only learned about Sessions’ meetings through press reports.
Trump himself finally weighed in on Thursday afternoon, telling reporters in a brief exchange that he still has “total” confidence in Sessions. When asked if Sessions should recuse himself, Trump replied, “I don’t think so.”
