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You would think that in the frenzy surrounding Michael Flynn and oh-by-the-way Jeff Sessions and their Russian contacts, Team Trump would have begun to be a bit more careful in their testimony and written statements from then on. You'd be wrong, because CNN learned that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was no more thorough in disclosing those Russian meetings on the paperwork needed to obtain his new security clearance than he was in his original Senate testimony.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings he had last year with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance, the Justice Department told CNN Wednesday.
Sessions, who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least two times last year, didn't note those interactions on the form, which requires him to list "any contact" he or his family had with a "foreign government" or its "representatives" over the past seven years, officials said.
The Justice Department explanation for these glaring omissions on a government form intended to give intelligence officials some basic information on potential security issues is that the FBI itself told them meh, no big deal.
Sessions initially listed a year's worth of meetings with foreign officials on the security clearance form, according to Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores. But she says he and his staff were then told by an FBI employee who assisted in filling out the form, known as the SF-86, that he didn't need to list dozens of meetings with foreign ambassadors that happened in his capacity as a senator.
Um, ok. The expert contacted by CNN vigorously disputes this, by the way, and there doesn't seem to be a legal loophole there for "unless you meet with foreign officials all the time and would find this too much a bother," but there it is.