Cornyn focuses on Comey, Clinton emails in Sessions’ Senate hearing on Russian Federation

During his testimony, the former Alabama senator was often defiant, telling the committee allegations that he’d colluded with Russian Federation during the 2016 presidential election was an “appalling and detestable lie” and that he’d never recused himself “from defending my honor against scurrilous and false accusations“.

Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that is investigating Russian interference in the election campaign, Sessions disputed claims of collusion between Moscow and the Trump presidential campaign.

Comey told lawmakers last week that he knew details that made Sessions’s involvement in the FBI Russia probe “problematic”. Warner cited reports that a friend of Trump’s suggested that he was considering removing Mueller from the investigation.

Sessions said he did respond, telling Comey “that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice needed to be careful to follow department policies regarding appropriate contact with the White House”. “There are other things that had happened that to me indicated a lack of discipline”, Sessions concluded.

Sessions, a close campaign adviser to Trump and the first senator to endorse him, stepped aside from the investigation in early March after acknowledging he had spoken twice in the months before the election with the Russian ambassador. He insisted that he never knew anything about the Russian Federation probe or had any role in it. “It’s not only highly unusual, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate”, Mr. Cramer, a security and business consultant with Berkeley Research Group, said in an interview.

If Comey had information that Sessions would need to recuse himself, he said, that would have been “double reason” to talk to Boente. Sessions denied a 2016 meeting with the Russian ambassador at the Mayflower hotel.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., suggested that the attorney general was ducking critical questions in his testimony.

“I am not stonewalling”, Sessions said.

Any suggestion to the contrary, he said, was “an appalling and detestable lie” and “secret innuendo”.

Indeed, this is what both the Senate investigation and the special counsel investigation, headed by Robert Mueller, are supposed to suss out.

“I don’t remember any conversations with him at all about that”, Comey said. He said he would agree to dismiss Mueller only if there were a legitimate basis to do so. Many questions aimed at Sessions had to do with Comey’s firing by President Donald Trump.

He said he felt okay leaving Comey alone with the president in the Oval Office.

Sessions told Wyden he “basically recused” himself from the Russian Federation investigation during his first day as attorney general because he “never accessed files, never learned the names of investigators, never met with them, never asked for any documentation”.

It was still unclear by the end of the almost three-hour hearing why Sessions met with Kislyak privately if not to address reports that Russian Federation was engaged in a hacking campaign to undermine Democrats and, specifically, the party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Andrew Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School and associate counsel under former President Barack Obama, said it was not unusual for government employees to refuse to discuss conversations with the president in order to preserve the right to invoke executive privilege later. “Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected with the Trump campaign”, Sessions said.

Democratic senators expressed frustration with Sessions on several occasions.

On another hot-button issue, Sen. Sessions says he was there for a speech by then-candidate Donald Trump and members of Sessions’ staff also were there. “It is premature for me to deny the president a full and intelligent choice about executive privilege”, Sessions said. In the picture, Sessions could be seen speaking with two men who were standing with their backs to the camera.