Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) joined several other Democrats in calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ resignation Thursday, after the Washington Post reported that Sessions met twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential campaign.
Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation process in January that he had not met with any Russian during the campaign, though a White House official told TPM Thursday that 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.”
In a statement emailed to TPM, McCaskill said Sessions had “misled” the Judiciary Committee.
“Attorney General Sessions met one-on-one with the Russian ambassador in the midst of a Russian cyber campaign against the U.S., and then misled the Judiciary Committee under oath about that meeting,” she said. “He then tried to excuse it by saying it was part of the normal course of his Armed Services Committee work.”
“Claire has never met one-on-one with the ambassador, and never received a call from him. She did attend a group meeting about adoptions with other Senators, and had a brief proactive call with the ambassador amid calls to several other parties to the Iran nuclear deal. Attorney General Sessions, on the other hand, misled the Senate under oath,” the statement concludes.
McCaskill had earlier claimed Thursday, on her on Twitter account, that “I’ve been on the Armed Services Com for 10 years.No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever. Ambassadors call members of Foreign Rel Com.”
However, that was seemingly quickly disproven:
Off to meeting w/Russian Ambassador. Upset about the arbitrary/cruel decision to end all US adoptions,even those in process.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) January 30, 2013
Today calls with British, Russian, and German Ambassadors re: Iran deal. #doingmyhomework
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) August 6, 2015
This post has been updated.
11/11/2016
TPM: no, it was not “quickly disproven” - quoting Mediate does not make it so. McCaskill was clearly not meeting about Russia’s vindictive adoption ban as a member of the Senate Armed Services Cmte: please don’t make it appear that she was.
Resign Hell! Sessions needs to be indicted…tried and convicted of treason.
Must be an old picture at the top. Kelly Ayotte, FORMERLY my Senator is standing in the background. I am so so so happy that she is now listed among “the disappeared.” She always ran as an “independent” but voted with the R scum 98.6 percent of the time. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
As I read the McCaskill statement, it appears to me that she may have been sarcastically paraphrasing what Sessions claimed, rather than saying that she herself had not met with the Russian Ambassador. Waiting for clarification.