Attorney General Jeff Sessions is currently facing the House Judiciary Committee over the DOJ’s decision to review the Uranium One deal and the Clinton Foundation. Of course, the subject has strayed and others have asked about special counsel on FBI’s handling of failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email investigation.
One of the biggest revelations so far is that Sessions now remembers a meeting he had with an advisor on President Donald Trump’s campaign about Russian contacts. Sessions previously testified “he knew of no such contacts with the campaign.”
President Donald Trump’s former campaign foreign policy advisors Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, have testified that they told Sessions, who served as Trump’s campaign, national security advisor, about contacts with Russians. From Fox News:
“I do now recall the March 2016 meeting at Trump Hotel that Mr. Papadopoulos attended, but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he said during that meeting,” Sessions said. “After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government for that matter.“But I did not recall this event, which occurred 18 months before my testimony of a few weeks ago, and would gladly have reported it.”
He told the same committee last month he did not know of any contact between Russian and members of the campaign:
“I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did, and I don’t believe it happened,” Sessions said in his former testimony.
Republicans have pushed the DOJ to appoint a special counsel to investigate the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary’s email scandal.
Sessions told the committee that the DOJ is looking into and must “study what the facts are” before it decides to take that step. From The Washington Examiner:
“I would say ‘looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel,” Sessions told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Tuesday at the House Judiciary Committee when asked why the Justice Department hasn’t appointed a special counsel when it “looks like” there was wrongdoing.
Sessions have told federal prosecutors to investigate if the DOJ needs a special counsel. Jordan pressed Sessions on what needs to happen in order for the DOJ to do so:
“It would take a factual basis that meets the standard of the appointment of a special counsel,” the attorney general said.Sessions noted that a special counsel has only been appointed twice before — the first for the government’s raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993, and the second for Russian meddling in the 2016 election.Sessions said both of those were “pretty special, factual situations.”“You can have your idea, but sometimes we have to study what the facts are and to evaluate whether it meets the standard that requires a special counsel,” Sessions told Jordan.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) asked Sessions about Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, who has had numerous women accuse him of sexual assault when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. From Politico:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday that he has “no reason to doubt” the women who have accused Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct.”I have no reason to doubt these young women,” he told the House Judiciary Committee.
Moore is running to take over Sessions’ seat. Sessions told the committee “he has been advised to play no role in any potential investigations surrounding the Alabama campaign because he knows many of the people involved.”
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