Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that he had never briefed President Donald trump on investigations related to the presidential campaigns, nor did he give Trump any reason to believe he had been wiretapped by the Obama administration.
Sessions said that was because he had “held a role” in the Trump campaign, and that, as a result, he had recused himself from these matters – though he did so nearly a month after taking his current office.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Sessions was asked: “Did you ever have a chance to brief the President on investigations related to the campaigns or did you ever give him any reason to believe he was wiretapped by the previous administration?”
“Look, the answer is no,” Sessions said. “But what happened in my case was that I was active in the campaign. I held a role in the campaign. There’s a code of federal regulations, rules, statutes, really, that say if you’re involved as a Department of Justice employee in a campaign, have a role in that campaign, you cannot investigate your own campaign even though you may have had nothing whatsoever to do with anything improper, you should not investigate your own campaign.”
“So, I have recused myself and I’m not talking to the President or the people who are investigating the case, and I am unable to comment on any of these details,” he said.
Sessions was sworn in as Attorney General on Feb. 8. After revelations that he met twice with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign, despite saying during his confirmation hearings that he had not had any “communications with Russians,” he recused himself on March 2 “matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.”
In a supplemental letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6, he clarified that “I understood the scope of the recusal” included “investigations of post-election Russian contacts with the Trump transition team and administration,” in Senate Democrats’ words.
On March 4, Trump claimed without evidence that President Obama had personally ordered that Trump Tower have its “wires tapped.”
Sessions was asked if he was “not aware” of recusal rules during his confirmation hearings, or during “subsequent times when we asked you whether or not you would recuse yourself from investigations related to the campaign?”
Sessions said he had maintained his commitment during the confirmation hearings to evaluate whether he should recuse himself or not.
“We reached a conclusions within less than three weeks of being in office that I should recuse myself,” he said.
Watch below via CBS News:
“I’m not talking to the president or the people who are investigating the case,” AG Sessions says on Russia probe https://t.co/T5uqoA85rO pic.twitter.com/3lF4J4ralI
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 15, 2017
