Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into Russia-related events that occurred during the 2016 Republican Convention in Cleveland, Reuters reported Thursday.
Anonymous sources told Reuters that Mueller is primarily investigating a meeting between then-Sen. and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russia’s U.S. then-Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at a convention event, as well as the softening of platform language supportive of Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.
The platform reportedly initially called for the United States to supply “lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine’s armed forces and greater coordination with NATO on defense planning,” though the first half of the sentence was later removed. Diana Denman, who sat on the platform committee’s national security subcommittee, told Reuters that the Trump campaign had a direct hand in altering that language.
Sessions’ meetings with Kislyak have created problems for him before, after he initially failed to disclose them when asked by former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) if he was aware of any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the attorney general’s January 2017 confirmation hearing. The revelation of those meetings by the Washington Post a couple months later forced Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia probe, leading to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein taking over the investigation and appointing Mueller as special prosecutor.
