Jeff ... with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say] When …
Jeff Sessions ... When asked to comment on Sessions's contacts with …
Attorney General Jeff ... Russian ambassador did not respond to requests for comment about his contacts with Sessions. The …
Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice
in 2016 with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, but did
not mention this during his confirmation hearing to become U.S. attorney
general. Sessions was asked about possible contacts between President
Trump's campaign and the Russian government.
(Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)
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.
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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.
When
Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, the senator was a
senior member of the influential Armed Services Committee as well as one
of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers. Sessions played a prominent
role supporting Trump on the stump after formally joining the campaign
in February 2016.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) questioned attorney
general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) about news that
intelligence officials briefed President-elect Trump on unconfirmed
reports that Russia has compromising information on Trump.
(Senate Judiciary Committee)
At his Jan. 10
Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al
Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that
anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian
government in the course of the 2016 campaign.
“I’m
not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. 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.”
Officials
said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the
lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed
with Kislyak.
“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman.
In
January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to
written questions. “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior
advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone
connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election,
either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote.
Sessions responded with one word: “No.”
Justice
officials said Sessions met with Kislyak on Sept. 8 in his capacity as a
member of the armed services panel rather than in his role as a Trump
campaign surrogate.
“He was asked
during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump
campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the
Armed Services Committee,” Flores said.
She
added that Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with
foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee,
including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese,
Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak.
In
the case of the September meeting, one department official who came to
the defense of the attorney general said, “There’s just not strong
recollection of what was said.”
The Russian ambassador did not respond to requests for comment about his contacts with Sessions.
The
Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed
Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met
with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator,
including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with
the Russian ambassador last year. The other lawmakers on the panel did
not respond as of Wednesday evening.
“Members
of the committee have not been beating a path to Kislyak’s door,” a
senior Senate Armed Services Committee staffer said, citing tensions in
relations with Moscow. Besides Sessions, the staffer added, “There
haven’t been a ton of members who are looking to meet with Kislyak for
their committee duties.”
Last
month, The Washington Post reported that Trump national security adviser
Michael Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak during the
month before Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Mike
Pence, the vice president-elect, and other top Trump officials. Flynn
was forced to resign the following week.
When
asked to comment on Sessions’s contacts with Kislyak, Franken said in a
statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday: “If it’s true that
Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst
of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my
questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.”
Franken
added: “It is now clearer than ever that the attorney general cannot,
in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and
the FBI of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself
immediately.”
Current
and former U.S. officials say they see Kislyak as a diplomat, not an
intelligence operative. But they were not sure to what extent, if any,
Kislyak was aware of or involved in the covert Russian election
campaign.
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.”
Two months
before the September meeting, Sessions attended a Heritage Foundation
event in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention
that was attended by roughly 50 ambassadors. When the event was over, a
small group of ambassadors approached Sessions as he was leaving the
podium, and Kislyak was among them, the Justice Department official
said.
Sessions
then spoke individually to some of the ambassadors, including Kislyak,
the official said. In the informal exchanges, the ambassadors expressed
appreciation for his remarks and some of them invited him to events they
were sponsoring, said the official, citing a former Sessions staffer
who was at the event.
Democratic
lawmakers, including senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
have demanded in recent weeks that Sessions recuse himself from the
government’s inquiry into possible ties between Trump associates and
Russia.
Last
week, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a senior member of the House
Judiciary Committee, became one of the few Republican representatives to
state publicly the need for an independent investigation.
Sessions’s public position on Russia has evolved over time.
In an interview with RealClear World
on the sidelines of the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum in March
2015, Sessions said the United States and Europe “have to unify” against
Russia.
More than a year later, he spoke about fostering a stronger relationship with the Kremlin. In a July 2016 interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sessions praised Trump’s plan to build better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Donald
Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this cycle of
hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us billions of
dollars in defense, and creating hostilities,” Sessions told CNN.
Asked
whether he viewed Putin as a good or bad leader, Sessions told CNN: “We
have a lot of bad leaders around the world that operate in ways we
would never tolerate in the United States. But the question is, can we
have a more peaceful, effective relationship with Russia? Utilizing
interests that are similar in a realistic way to make this world a safer
place and get off this dangerous hostility with Russia? I think it’s
possible.”
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