Growing list of questions about Trump’s campaign’s contact with Russian Federation

Sessions also underscored that his communications with Kislyak in 2016 were not regular and included only two encounters. Just hours before the revelation that Mr Sessions had failed to disclose two meetings with the Russian ambassador, the House Intelligence Committee set out its terms of reference for its investigation.

In a statement, the Justice Department stressed that Sessions’ recusal should not be regarded as a confirmation that such an investigation is already underway.

Asked whether Sessions had told the truth to the Senate, Trump said, “I think he probably did”.

On Capitol Hill, a chorus of Democratic lawmakers called for Sessions to step down, while demands grew for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Russian Federation interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.

Sessions’ announcement that he would recuse himself was plainly meant to defuse a controversy that looked increasingly unsafe for the Trump administration, but in several ways, all it did was to refocus the questions that will be brought up by political opponents and even concerned allies. The Senate Intelligence Committee made a similar request, the AP said.

Moscow’s top diplomat in the US has become the Kevin Bacon of the Trump White House’s Russian Federation imbroglio.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was famously silenced in the senate during last month’s vote on his nomination after she quoted a letter from the late wife of Martin Luther King opposing his nomination as a federal judge in 1986.

This time, key Republican lawmakers including Utah representative Jason Chaffetz, Ohio Senator Rob Portman and Maine Senator Susan Collins have broken ranks with the White House’s line expressing absolute faith in Sessions. A Washington Post article on Wednesday claimed that Sessions held a meeting with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the USA between July and September 2016, while he was an Alabama Senator.

When the meetings with Kislyak took place Sessions was Alabama senator.

It’s unclear when the photo was taken, but likely during the years when Blunt also served on the Armed Services Committee. McCaskill says the photo came from a meeting with the Russians about worldwide adoptions.

Blumenthal said that if Sessions fails to provide “a credible explanation” under oath, “he will have to resign”.

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General said, “I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign”.

Blunt said in a statement that the issue should be what is considered reasonable contact between Sessions and the Russians, and what was not. How Sessions can continue to remain attorney general in the face of such deception is hard to imagine. The job is now filled on an interim basis by Dana J. Boente, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, pending the confirmation of Rod J. Rosenstein, the United States attorney for Maryland. I’ve talked to at least 20 ambassadors in the last six weeks.

His opponents believe the Alabamian committed perjury when he testified with an unequivocal “No”, when asked whether he spoke with anyone connected to the Russian government before or after election day.

The liberal site Daily Kos linked a clip of the Sessions testimony under the headline, “Here are the 30 seconds that may end Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ career”. “It is about protecting the integrity of our democracy”, Navarro says. Trump has repeatedly said he would like engage Russian Federation to improve relations. “And it’s something we don’t appreciate”, he said.

Sessions said on Thursday he would disqualify himself from justice department decisions on investigations related to 2016 presidential campaigns. He has said he will recuse himself from probes into possible Russian interference.

A Philadelphia native, Rosenstein began working as a trial attorney in the public integrity section of President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department after graduating from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and clerking for Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.