Attorney General Jeff Sessions refused to confirm or deny whether President Trump brought up the federal Russia investigation as a reason to fire FBI Director James Comey.
“That calls for a communication that I have had with the president, and I believe it remains confidential,” Sessions said, in response to questioning from top Judiciary Committee Democrat Dianne Feinstein (CA) at committee hearing Wednesday.
Asked again by Feinstein if he was denying that the Russia probe was part of the discussions about firing Comey, Session said he wasn’t confirming or denying anything about the hypothetical conversation because he considered those conversations confidential.
Earlier in the hearing, Sessions signaled that he was going to disregard a request previously issued by committee Democrats — via a letter to him last week — to clear up in what areas of potential questioning the President intended to invoke executive privilege.
“I can neither assert executive privilege, nor can I disclose today the content of my confidential conversations with the President,” Sessions said during his opening statement.
That did not stop Feinstein from asking Sessions to go through the reasoning and timeline in the decision to oust Comey. Sessions clung to the rationale given in memos to the President Trump authored by him and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which they were critical of how Comey handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use.
“I don’t think it’s been fully understood the significance of the errors that Comey made on the Clinton matter,” Sessions said.
Trump has on multiple occasions undercut that logic.
Sessions is equivocating, mumbling, taking a long time to decide how to answer the serious questions and using phony humor like a 12-year old who is obviously fudging the facts. He and the entire Trump administration should be so worried and embarrassed, but I’m not expecting much to happen.
Like when he responded to Franken’s questions during his Confirmation hearing. He made jokes, got caught lying in the hearings - and had to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry which still drives Trump bonkers.
Side note - what does this statement mean? Seems more than slightly contradictory.
that was a *Yes’, right ?
Sessions now admits he had conversations with the Russians but is now saying that it wasn’t about the election but about policy positions. Was one of those policy positions ‘sanctions’, ‘Ukraine’, or other RU wish list items? If so, then he is implicated in the conspiracy, especially if he knew that Russia had been in direct contact with the campaign on these matters and understood that Russians were doing things behind the scenes to boost Trump.
I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV either, but it sure sounds like he’d like to take the fifth, but can’t do that either, so this gibberish spilled out.