Jeff Sessions recuses himself from probe into Russian meddling in election

“This allegation that a surrogate – and I had been called a surrogate for Donald Trump – had been meeting continuously with Russian officials, and that’s what I – it struck me very hard, and that’s what I focused my answer on”, he said.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi went a step further.

Dozens of Congressional Democrats have called on Sessions to resign. But his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has reportedly been investigated for contact with Russian Federation, along with other top Trump associates, and top Trump adviser Michael Flynn already had to resign his position as national security advisor for holding conversations with Kislyak between the election and inauguration.

His spokesperson said he met the Russian ambassador in the course of his work as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Then-Senator Sessions’ responses to the two questions about contacts with Russian officials regarding the 2016 election were direct and accurate responses to the questions he was asked.

It wasn’t just Democrats amping up the pressure.

The previously undisclosed meetings once again raised the question of whether Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the United States elections. The attorney general also said that “most of these ambassadors are pretty gossipy and it was in the middle of a campaign season”, but nothing he’d discussed with Kislyak had involved the campaign.

“As we’ve said in this country ever since Watergate, nothing makes an ambiguous action look worse than trying to cover it up”.

The senior Obama White House official was not told the names of the specific individuals involved because the official’s portfolio was foreign policy, not intelligence, so they were not briefed on aspects of the investigation involving US persons.

The Washington Post first reported the meetings, later confirmed by NPR’s Carrie Johnson, which came as he was a top surrogate for President Trump’s presidential campaign.

In a separate development on Thursday, a White House official said Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met Mr Kislyak in December – after the 8 November election.

Sessions stepped aside Thursday from overseeing the continuing FBI investigation into Russia’s interference in last year’s election. Sessions’ recusal will put a deputy in charge of the investigations that relate to the Trump campaign, but it is not entirely clear how broad that recusal will be. “To call him a spy is to misunderstand what a diplomat, even a Russian diplomat, does”.

The Washington Post reported that Jeff Sessions spoke with Sergey Kislyak twice a year ago, including a “private conversation” at the then-senator’s office in September.

That directly contradicted Sessions’ statement during his Senate confirmation hearing January 10.

Sessions was asked directly by Sen.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities”, Sessions responded.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Sessions wouldn’t need to recuse himself from an investigation if Sessions himself was not the subject of the investigation.

“I’d like him to explain what was said during that September 8th meeting”.

In January, Sessions denied to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had any “communications with Russians”.

Way back before this was even a huge thing, there was Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager who had a long history of doing business in Russian Federation and Ukraine.

But McCaskill’s recollection of her meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who has served in that role since 2008, was incorrect, a fact which Twitter users quickly revealed by resurfacing past tweets about a 2013 meeting and a 2015 phone call. A spokesperson for Heritage told Business Insider in an email that Sessions provided a keynote address at a defense and national-security luncheon attended by roughly 100 individuals.