Jeff Sessions Needs to Go -
By RICHARD W. PAINTERMARCH 2, 2017
In the wake of Wednesday’s revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke with Russia’s ambassador to the United States while working with the Trump campaign, despite denying those contacts during his confirmation hearings, key Republican
and Democratic lawmakers are calling for him to recuse himself from overseeing any Justice Department investigation into contacts between the campaign and the Russian government.
In 1972 Richard G. Kleindienst, the acting attorney general, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee
in a confirmation hearing on his nomination by President Richard Nixon to be attorney general.
Sessions answered, adding, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.”
Sessions also, on his written Senate confirmation questionnaire, denied having had any communications about the 2016 election with the Russians.
Sessions had at least two conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States in July and September 2016 while Mr.
In 1972, any federal employee who provided such inaccurate information under oath about communications with the Russians would have been fired
and had his or her security clearances revoked immediately, and probably also would have been criminally prosecuted.
If he had intended to say that his contacts with the Russians had been in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
and not for the Trump campaign, he could have said that.
And this time, unlike in 1972, the attorney general’s misleading testimony involves communications
not with the president of the United States, but with a rival nuclear superpower.
