Sessions Removes Himself From Russia Probes Over Meeting Envoy

Back in January during his confirmation hearings, Senator Al Franken brought up the potentially-compromising information that Russia claimed they had on President Trump When asked point blank by Franken if he was aware of any communications between Trump “surrogates” and Russia, Sessions said, “I’m not aware of any of those activities”.

Asked by NBC News on Thursday morning if he would recuse himself in investigating any potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, Sessions said he would do so “whenever it’s appropriate”.

Sessions, however, told his confirmation hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 10 that he did not know of contacts between Trump campaign members and Russian Federation. That raises the question of perjury as the hearings are conducted under oath.

Maine’s other senator, independent Angus King, had previously called for Sessions to recuse himself and reiterated that stand Thursday, while Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin of the 2nd District joined his colleagues in calling for recusal.

(Others include Michael Flynn, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former adviser Carter Page, and lawyer Michael Cohen.) The FBI has been investigating said ties for much of the previous year. At the time, Sessions was a high-profile surrogate for Donald Trump’s campaign.

CNN reporter Ana Navarro tells Detroit Today producer Jake Neher it’s not enough for Sessions to just recuse himself. “The Democrats are overplaying their hand”.

“Ever since that time [the election], they’re objective clearly was to undermine the Democratic process…”

McCaskill, March 2: It’s clear Attorney General Sessions misled the Senate – the question is, why?

In November, Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman told the Associated Press “there was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity”.

The New York Times reported two weeks ago, citing U.S. intelligence sources, that three Trump campaign staff – including campaign chief Paul Manafort – had communicated with Russian intelligence officers over the past year.

U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings criticized Sessions for keeping his contact with the ambassador secret even after Trump fired his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Read the full report from The New York Times here.

The image had circulated as part of the conservative pushback against Democratic criticism of Sessions – with outlets noting that a number of Democratic lawmakers also had met with the ambassador in the past.

“It’s perfectly normal for diplomats to reach out to the campaign team”, he said. On Wednesday, the White House Counsel’s Office said it had instructed officials to save all their emails that may be related to Russian Federation, even as it emerged that the Obama administration had taken extraordinary steps to save material related to Russia’s involvement in the election, fearing the incoming administration would delete it.

Keane believes the reason that President Trump has not spoken poorly of Russian President Vladimir Putin is because he doesn’t want to harm future negotiation prospects between the two.

Watergate refers to the scandals spawned by a break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Washington, DC building of that name in 1972 that prompted Mr Richard Nixon to become the only USA president ever to resign. “The president has gotten himself into this fix that is very serious”.