This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions, facing a chorus of criticism over his newly disclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador last fall, recused himself on Thursday from any current or future investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions, facing a storm of criticism over newly disclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, recused himself on Thursday from any investigation into charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
His abrupt decision to remove himself from the case capped a harried day for the Trump administration over the ongoing Russia controversy and intensified pressure in Congress to conduct a full, outside investigation into questions that have shadowed Mr. Trump since his election.
His announcement, delivered at a terse news conference, came after a day of rapid-fire developments in a murky affair that has shadowed President Trump, jeopardized his closest aides and intensified pressure for a full inquiry into Moscow’s attempts to influence the election as well as the policies of the new administration.
At a hastily called news conference, Mr. Sessions acknowledged that he had two conversations with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington. He said one of them was a sit-down meeting at his Senate office on Sept. 8, two months before the vote, in the midst of intensifying reports about Russia’s attempts to meddle in the election and hack into the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Many top Democrats demanded Mr. Sessions’s resignation, and a growing number of Republicans declared that he should not take part in any investigation into the case, given his own still largely unexplained role in it.
Asked whether he and the ambassador discussed Mr. Trump or the upcoming election, Mr. Sessions said, “I don’t recall.” He said ambassadors are typically “pretty gossipy” and “this was in campaign season, but I don’t recall any specific political discussions.”
But Mr. Trump stoutly defended Mr. Sessions, one of his few early champions on Capitol Hill. “He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional,” he said in a statement, which accused Democrats of engaging in “a total witch hunt.”
The disclosure that he had two discussions with the ambassador, which was first revealed late Wednesday by The Washington Post, contradicted forceful and repeated denials from the White House that anyone from the campaign had discussions with the Russians. At a news conference on Feb. 20, Mr. Trump declared that “I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does,” and a spokeswoman said last week that “to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place.”
Mr. Sessions insisted there was nothing nefarious about his two meetings with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, even though he did not disclose them to the Senate during his confirmation hearing and they occurred during the heat of the race between Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and Mr. Trump, whom Mr. Sessions was advising on national security.
Mr. Sessions, forced to address the issue at his very first news conference as attorney general since he was confirmed three weeks ago, said he made the decision to recuse himself after meeting with senior career officials at the Justice Department. He said he would not take part in any investigations “related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.”
In his account Thursday of the more substantive meeting, which took place in his Senate office on Sept. 8, Mr. Sessions described Mr. Kislyak as one of a parade of envoys who seek out lawmakers like him to glean information about American policies and promote the agendas of their governments.
He would not confirm whether the Justice Department has already opened such an investigation. However, the F.B.I. is known to have examined possible contacts between Russia and Trump advisers, including Michael Flynn, who resigned as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser last month after it was disclosed he had made misleading statements about his contacts with Mr. Kislyak during the transition.
“Somehow, the subject of Ukraine came up,” Mr. Sessions said, recalling that the meeting grew testy after the ambassador defended Russia’s conduct toward its neighbor and heaped blame on everybody else. “I thought he was pretty much of an old-style, Soviet-type ambassador,” Mr. Sessions said, noting that he declined a lunch invitation from Mr. Kislyak.
The remarks by Mr. Sessions came not long after President Trump on Thursday expressed his support for Mr. Sessions and said he should not recuse himself from the investigation. Mr. Sessions was a key adviser and surrogate for Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself was one of his first public acts as attorney general. He said he made the decision after consulting with Justice Department officials, and he denied misleading Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, when he said in his confirmation hearing that he had not met with Russian officials about the Trump campaign.
Touring the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the newest American aircraft carrier, in Newport News, Va., Mr. Trump said that he “wasn’t aware” that Mr. Sessions had spoken to the ambassador, but that he believed the attorney general had testified truthfully to the Senate during his confirmation hearing.
“In retrospect,” Mr. Sessions told reporters, “I should have slowed down and said, ‘But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times, and that would be the ambassador.’”
“I think he probably did,” Mr. Trump told reporters.
The latest disclosures — and the Trump administration’s contradictory accounts of them — have deepened the questions about Russia’s role in the election and its aftermath. It has fueled calls for congressional and independent investigations, and toppled another close Trump aide, Michael T. Flynn, who resigned as national security adviser last month after admitting he had misled the administration over his contacts with Mr. Kislyak.
Asked whether Mr. Sessions should recuse himself in the Russia investigations, the president said, “I don’t think so.”
On Thursday, the White House confirmed that Mr. Flynn had his own previously undisclosed meeting with the ambassador in December to “establish a line of communication” between the incoming administration and the Russian government. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower.
Contacts with Russian officials have become a persistent distraction for the Trump administration. Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, was forced to resign over his conflicting statements about conversations with Mr. Kislyak. Now Mr. Sessions was forced to use his first news conference as attorney general to address questions about his impartiality.
The extent and frequency of the Flynn-Kislyak contacts remain unclear. But news of the meeting added to the emerging picture of how the relationship between Mr. Trump’s team and Moscow evolved to include some of Mr. Trump’s most trusted advisers.
Congressional Republicans began breaking ranks to join Democrats in demanding that Mr. Sessions recuse himself from overseeing an investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Those calls came after the disclosure that Mr. Sessions himself spoke with the Russian ambassador last year, in seeming contradiction to his testimony at his confirmation hearing.
Two other Trump campaign advisers also reportedly spoke with Mr. Kislyak last year at a Global Partners in Diplomacy event on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
The partisan furor that broke out with the Justice Department’s acknowledgment of the contacts late Wednesday began to take on a bipartisan sheen as the controversy spilled into Thursday morning.
Carter Page, a businessman and early Trump foreign policy adviser, told MSNBC on Thursday, “I’m not going to deny that I talked to him,” but said in an earlier statement that he would not comment about the event, which was off the record. Additionally, J. D. Gordon, a retired naval officer who advised Mr. Trump on national security, told USA Today that he had had an “informal conversation” with Mr. Kislyak, and played down its importance.
Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who leads the Oversight Committee, said on Twitter on Thursday, “AG Sessions should clarify his testimony and recuse himself.” Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement: “Jeff Sessions is a former colleague and a friend, but I think it would be best for him and for the country to recuse himself from the D.O.J. Russia probe.”
Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself exposed a rift between the White House and the Justice Department, not only over whether he should do so — Mr. Trump said he did not think Mr. Sessions needed to — but over the president’s public statements. A Justice Department official confessed puzzlement about why the White House regularly asserted that no one from the Trump campaign had any contact with the Russian government.
The House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Mr. Sessions “needs to clarify” his testimony, and at first appeared to indicate that he thought Mr. Sessions should recuse himself from Russia-linked investigations. “I think — the trust of the American people — you recuse yourself from these situations,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Mr. Trump said that he “wasn’t aware” that Mr. Sessions had spoken to the ambassador, but that he believed the attorney general had testified truthfully during his confirmation hearing.
“For any investigation going forward,” he said, “you want to make sure everybody trusts the investigation.” Asked to clarify whether that required Mr. Sessions to step aside, he replied, “I think it’d be easier from that standpoint, yes.”
“I think he probably did,” Mr. Trump told reporters, while touring the Gerald R. Ford, the newest American aircraft carrier, in Newport News, Va. Asked whether Mr. Sessions should recuse himself from investigations, the president said, “I don’t think so.”
But Mr. McCarthy later backtracked on “Fox and Friends,” saying, “I’m not calling on him to recuse himself.”
Within Mr. Trump’s inner circle, Mr. Flynn appears to have been the primary interlocutor with the Russian envoy. The two were in contact during the campaign and the transition, Mr. Kislyak and current and former American officials have said. But Mr. Sessions served as the chairman of Mr. Trump’s national security committee — a post Democrats said would have made him a much sought-after figure for officials from many foreign countries.
Some Democrats were already going further, suggesting that Mr. Sessions had perjured himself in the confirmation hearing for the attorney general post and demanding that he step down.
There is nothing unusual about meetings between presidential campaigns and foreign diplomats. Mr. Kislyak was one of several envoys who attended the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where his first meeting with Mr. Sessions, according to the attorney general, was a brief encounter after a panel organized by the Heritage Foundation. Ambassadors also attended the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, though it was not clear whether Mr. Kislyak was among them.
“For the good of the country, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should resign,” said the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.
“Active embassies here consider it as their assignment to stretch out feelers to presidential hopefuls,” said Peter Wittig, the German ambassador to the United States, who met most of the Republican candidates, though not Mr. Trump. “I don’t consider it as something unusual or problematic.”
The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, took the same position, saying, “Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country and must resign.”
The trouble in Mr. Sessions’s case is that his meeting came as the nation’s intelligence agencies were concluding that Russia had tried to destabilize the election and help Mr. Trump. Mr. Sessions’s initial lack of disclosure of the meetings with Mr. Kislyak fed suspicions that it was more than run-of-the-mill diplomacy.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter on Thursday to the Justice Department and the F.B.I. asking for “an immediate criminal investigation into these statements, which could potentially implicate a number of criminal laws including lying to Congress and perjury.”
The disclosure, first reported by The Washington Post, contradicted forceful and repeated denials from the White House that anyone from the Trump campaign had discussions with the Russians. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference on Feb. 20. “To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”
The Trump administration dismissed the accusations as partisan attacks, and Mr. Sessions said in a statement issued shortly before midnight that he had not addressed election matters with the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak.
When Mr. Sessions was asked at the news conference Thursday whether he and the ambassador had discussed Mr. Trump or the election, he said, “I don’t recall.” Ambassadors, he added, are typically “pretty gossipy,” and “this was in campaign season, but I don’t recall any specific political discussions.”
“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” Mr. Sessions said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”
Mr. Sessions noted that he was joined in the meeting by two retired Army colonels on his staff, as well as perhaps a younger staff member. He said they opened with small talk about a visit Mr. Sessions made to Russia with a church group in 1991.
On Thursday afternoon, at his news conference announcing his recusal, Mr. Sessions said that what he told the Senate “was honest and correct as I understood it at the time” because he had understood himself to be discussing whether he had had any campaign-related contacts with Russian officials.
“He said he was not a believer himself, but he was glad to have church people come there,” Mr. Sessions recalled.
He also said he recognized that his critics believed he had made a false statement. Saying that was “not my intent,” he said he would write to the Judiciary Committee to explain his testimony for the record.
That meeting came during the waning months of the campaign. But the meeting two months later of Mr. Kushner, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak came at an arguably more crucial time, with Mr. Trump as the president-elect and the Obama White House preparing to impose sanctions on Russia and publicly make its case that Moscow had interfered with the election.
Mr. Sessions’s decision exposed rifts between the White House and the Justice Department not only over whether he should recuse himself — President Trump said less than an hour earlier that he did not think he needed to do so — but also on the president’s public assertions about the controversy.
What is becoming clear is that the incoming Trump administration was simultaneously striking a conciliatory pose toward Moscow in a series of meetings and calls involving Mr. Kislyak.
Asked why the White House had frequently asserted that no one from the Trump campaign had any contact with the Russian government during the campaign, a Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “That’s the White House’s answer. I don’t know.”
“They generally discussed the relationship, and it made sense to establish a line of communication,” said Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman. “Jared has had meetings with many other foreign countries and representatives — as many as two dozen other foreign countries’ leaders and representatives.”
The clash was the latest escalation in the continuing fallout over what intelligence officials have concluded was Russian interference in the 2016 election to help President Trump, including by hacking Democratic emails and providing them to WikiLeaks for release.
The Trump Tower meeting lasted 20 minutes, and Mr. Kushner has not met since with Mr. Kislyak, Ms. Hicks said.
F.B.I. officials have been scrutinizing contacts between people affiliated with the Trump campaign over communication with the Russian government. And last month, the national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, resigned after it emerged that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about a conversation with Mr. Kislyak.
At Mr. Sessions’s confirmation hearing, Mr. Franken asked him about a CNN report that after the election, intelligence briefers had told President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising information about Mr. Trump.
Now, Mr. Sessions, formerly an Alabama senator, appears to be at risk of becoming caught in that same wave. He was the first senator to endorse Mr. Trump and became an architect of his populist campaign strategy who sharpened the candidate’s message on immigration and trade. Mr. Sessions became a trusted adviser and is seen as one of the power centers in the administration.
At the confirmation hearing for attorney general in January, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, asked Mr. Sessions about a CNN report that intelligence briefers had told Barack Obama, then the president, and Mr. Trump, then the president-elect, that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising information about Mr. Trump.
Mr. Franken also noted that the report indicated that surrogates for Mr. Trump and intermediaries for the Russian government continued to exchange information during the campaign. He asked Mr. Sessions what he would do if that report proved true.
Mr. Franken also noted that the report indicated that surrogates for Mr. Trump and intermediaries for the Russian government continued to exchange information during the campaign. He asked Mr. Sessions what he would do if that report proved true.
Mr. Sessions replied that he was “not aware of any of those activities.” He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
Mr. Sessions replied that he was “not aware of any of those activities.” He added, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
But the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday that Mr. Sessions had twice communicated with the Russian ambassador last year. The first time was in July, at the Republican National Convention, after he gave a speech at an event for ambassadors sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. The second time was a visit to his office by Mr. Kislyak in September. The Washington Post earlier reported both encounters.
On Thursday, Mr. Sessions said he did not view Mr. Kislyak’s visit as tied to his campaign role, but he acknowledged, “I can’t speak for what the Russian ambassador may have had in his mind.”
While confirming the conversations, the department played down both. Of the Heritage Foundation encounter, a Justice Department official said the Russian ambassador was among a small group of diplomats who approached Mr. Sessions as he was leaving the stage. The ambassadors, the official said, thanked Mr. Sessions for his remarks and invited him to join them at various events they were sponsoring, but he made no commitments to do so.
Of the office visit, the official said, the discussion focused on relations between the United States and Russia and issues the two countries were facing, although the department left open the possibility that there had been “superficial” comments about news related to the election.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, said “there was absolutely nothing misleading” about Mr. Sessions’s answers at his confirmation hearing. She said that Mr. Sessions, as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had at least 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors, including those from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Poland and Russia.
She added: “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.”
But Democrats were unassuaged. In a statement, Mr. Franken called Mr. Sessions’s testimony “at best misleading,” noting, “It’s clearer than ever now that the attorney general cannot, in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself immediately.”
And Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, went further, calling for Mr. Sessions to resign because he let a “demonstrably false” statement stand for weeks without correcting the public record.
“There is no longer any question that we need a truly independent commission to investigate this issue,” Mr. Cummings said.
