Washington Post: Sessions Met With Russian Envoy Twice Last Year, Encounters He Later Did Not Disclose by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller (March 1, 2017):
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.
* * *
Steven Hall, former head of Russia operations at the CIA, said that Russia would have been keenly interested in cultivating a relationship with Sessions because of his role on key congressional committees and as an early adviser to Trump.
Sessions’s membership on the Armed Services Committee would have made him a priority for the Russian ambassador. “The fact that he had already placed himself at least ideologically behind Trump would have been an added bonus for Kislyak,” Hall said.
Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who until 2014 served as U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he was not surprised that Kislyak would seek a meeting with Sessions. “The weird part is to conceal it,” he said. “That was at the height of all the discussions of what Russia was doing during the election.”
Washington Post: Top Republicans Call on Sessions to Recuse Himself From Russia Investigation by Karoun Demirjian and Ed O'Keefe (March 2, 2017):
Top Republicans said Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from federal investigations of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said during an appearance on MSNBC that Sessions should bow out to maintain “the trust of the American people.”
Minutes later, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) joined McCarthy’s call, tweeting that “AG Sessions should clarify his testimony and recuse himself.”
The calls from two of the House’s most prominent Republicans follow revelations that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador during election season. Under oath in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions had said that he had not met with any Russian officials.
The Atlantic: Republican Lawmakers Call for Sessions to Recuse Himself From Russia Investigation by Priscilla Alvarez (March 2, 2017):
Republican lawmakers have called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to step aside from oversight of the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Their calls came after recent news reports revealed that the former Alabama senator met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States during the election.
Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee; Darrell Issa, the California representative and former Oversight chair; and Michigan Representative Justin Amash have all said Sessions should recuse himself. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a similar suggestion in an interview on MSNBC, though within hours seemed to change his mind.
“I think, the trust of the American people, you recuse yourself in these situations,” McCarthy said. “I just think for any investigation going forward, you want to make sure everybody trusts the investigation … and that there’s not doubt within the investigation.” Reporter Mark Halperin followed up, asking whether the situation required Sessions’s recusal. “I think it would be easier from that standpoint, yes,” McCarthy answered. Later, in an interview with Fox & Friends, McCarthy said that he’s “not calling on him to recuse himself.”
The FBI, which the attorney general oversees, is reportedly investigating possible contact between Trump associates and Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, as well as the cyberattacks that targeted Democrats last year. On Wednesday night, The Washington Post reported that Sessions, then a senator and Trump campaign adviser, had spoken twice last year with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. Yet at his January 10 confirmation hearing, when Senator Al Franken asked Sessions about possible contact between Trump associates and the Russian government, Sessions said: “I’m not aware of any of those activities.” He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.”
Talking Points Memo: The Gravity Is Strong by Josh Marshall (March 2, 2017):
Why are there so many unforced errors? Why conceal this meeting? Frankly, why lie about it? As I said, big, big scandals work like this. People who don't even appear to be that close to the action keep getting pulled under for what seem like needless deceptions. The answer is usually that the stuff at the center of the scandal is so big that it requires concealment, even about things distant from the main action, things that it would seem much better and less damaging simply to admit.
* * *
Astronomers can't see black holes directly. They map them by their event horizon and their effect on nearby stars and stellar matter. We can't see yet what's at the center of the Trump/Russia black hole. But we can tell a lot about its magnitude by the scope of the event horizon and the degree of its gravitational pull, which is immense.
No comments:
Post a Comment