White House aide Kellyanne Conway said Monday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was willing to cooperate with the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding the ongoing investigations into Russian election meddling.
“I know that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was going to testify before some other committee this week to talk about the budget for the Department of Justice,” “Fox & Friends” presenter Steve Doocey asked Conway on Monday. “And now they’ve decided, because so many people were going to ask him about Comey and Mueller and all that other stuff, they’ve decided to put him out in front of the Senate Intel Committee?”
“Yes,” Conway answered. “Well, he is willing to cooperate and share what he knows.”
She moved on to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) assertion that the Senate Judiciary Committee should look into whether former Attorney General Loretta Lynch purposefully downplayed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server in order to benefit Clinton.
But Conway’s one-line answer is significant: Sessions is expected to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, where he will answer questions raised by fired FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the same committee last week.
Sessions wrote to the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over the Department of Justice on Saturday notifying them, the Washington Post reported, that he would send Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in his place for scheduled testimony regarding the department’s budget.
Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said Monday morning that he thought the Intelligence Committee hearing should be public, but that the committee hadn’t decided yet if it would be.
“My inclination is that this should be in an open session,” King told CBS’ “This Morning.” “The only reason you go into a close session is if it’s a national security, and I don’t believe we’re talking about national security issues here.”
Later on Monday, the Department of Justice said Sessions would testify publicly on Tuesday.
During his testimony Thursday, Comey said that FBI officials were “convinced” Sessions would recuse himself from Trump campaign-related matters weeks before the attorney general did so.
Sessions recused himself after revelations that he had not disclosed meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the United States after testifying under oath that he had no meetings with Russians during the 2016 campaign. After Comey’s testimony, a spokesperson said his recusal was the result of his participation in Trump’s campaign, not his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Multiple outlets reported that, during subsequent private testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, Comey said Sessions may have had another meeting with the ambassador during the campaign.
