The attorney of the attorney general testified on Monday that his client denies being enthusiastic about conspiring with a foreign power to interfere in a US election. It’s not that Jefferson Sessions denies hearing one of Donald Trump’s advisers suggest that Trump get together with Vladimir Putin for a pre-election strategy session. Or at least, he doesn’t deny it anymore, now that he’s been caught in multiple lies. Sessions just denies cheering for the idea.
In earlier statements, Trump economic adviser George Papadopoulos said that in March of 2016, while at a meeting of Trump’s strategy council, he suggested a meeting with Putin. According to Papadopoulos, Sessions “welcomed the idea.” But as the New York Times reports, the attorney’s attorney insists that Sessions’s reaction was more downbeat, including a request that no one ever make such a suggestion again.
Papadopoulos’s claim is notable for two reasons: One, according to the now-convicted adviser, Trump turned to Sessions when the meeting with Putin was suggested and it was Sessions who was “actually quite enthusiastic about a potential meeting.” Two, this meeting took place exactly one week after Papadopoulos met with Professor Joseph Mifsud, who informed Papadopoulos that the Russians had stolen material that could be used as “dirt” against Hillary Clinton. In between the meeting with the professor and the meeting with Trump, Papadopoulos exchanged calls or emails with several members of the Trump campaign team, including Trump campaign national co-chairman Sam Clovis who complimented Papadopoulos on his “great work” in making this connection.
There’s a very good reason why Papadopoulos came into that meeting with Trump expecting his Putin suggestion to be met with enthusiasm: Because that’s just how his earlier Russia news had been greeted. This wasn’t an old item that everyone had forgotten, it had all happened in the days leading up to the meeting. And it wasn’t something that had flown under the radar. In addition to the praise from Clovis, Papadopoulos information also reached, at a minimum, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, soon to be campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and deputy campaign director Rick Gates.
And while Sessions’s attorney is continuing to deny that Sessions praised the idea of a Trump-Putin conspiracy summit, the “my client has publicly testified under oath about his recollection of this meeting, and he stands by his testimony” approach has one big issue. Sessions has already had to back away from most of his original testimony. Sessions originally testified that he didn’t know of any Trump campaign members who had contacts with the Russians. That was before documents showed that he had been leading this meeting, where Papadopoulos not only suggested a Moscow visit, but explicitly repeated what he had learned about Russian’s “dirt” on Clinton. And it was before it became clear that one of the people in the Trump campaign with the most face to face time with Russians, was Jefferson Sessions.
Sessions has since been forced to “revise” his testimony multiple times. But he only did so because he was caught on paper and in testimony from others at the meeting. Now Sessions’s attorney is still clinging to the “enthusiasm gap” between what Papadopoulos recalls and how Sessions says the meeting went. As the Times states, Sessions has had to “repeatedly recalibrate his recollections of any campaign contact with Russians.” By which they mean that most of his original testimony turned out to be lies.
The wonder isn’t that Jeff Sessions is recused. It’s that he’s not being charged with contempt of Congress. For that, he can only think the Republicans who have his back … until election day, when they fully intend to let Trump toss him out.
It’s extremely notable that Sessions has been forced to walk back nearly every statement he’s made about the meeting with Trump advisors, but only because parts of that meeting were recorded and there were multiple witnesses. The same can’t be said about Sessions’s lengthy, behind closed doors meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Sessions has said he met with Kislyak “in his role as a member of the Senate Armed Forces committee.” But no other member of that committee had a private meeting with Kislyak. Instead, as the Atlantic pointed out last year, Sessions had a number of meetings with foreign dignitaries in the months after he became a core member of the Trump campaign; meetings in which he was clearly acting as a representative of Trump.
In the same Senate testimony where he denied his enthusiasm over the Papadopoulos suggestion, Sessions was asked by Senator Al Franken whether he had “communicated with the Russian government.” Sessions denied any contact. Saying that he “did not have communications with the Russians.” It was almost two months later before the Washington Post surfaced evidence showing that Sessions had met with Kislyak at least twice, including a long private meeting in his Senate office.
Jefferson Sessions has lied about his meeting with Russian officials over, and over, and over. He has never corrected any of this testimony until he was caught, red-handed, in a lie.
The same thing applies to Sessions’s actions within Trump’s campaign. He denied knowing that there had been contacts with Russia until evidence forced him to do so. With the Papadopoulos conviction, Sessions is still hanging onto the idea that he may have known, but didn’t support further contact with Russia.
Based on his track record, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that is not also a lie.