Jeff Sessions is in even deeper Trump-Russia legal trouble than we thought
Yesterday, after a dizzying weekend of developments involving Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Palmer Report asked if it’s possible that Sessions may have already secretly cut a plea deal with Mueller. Our reasoning was that Sessions has been keen on self preservation, and he’s known all along that he would face criminal charges for perjury. Now it turns out he’s in worse legal trouble than was publicly known.
More than a year ago, Jeff Sessions was caught having lied under oath about the existence of his Russia meetings during his Senate confirmation hearings. Although his Republican allies who control the Senate opted not to go after him for perjury, Robert Mueller can criminally charge him for it. Mueller has spent the past several months methodically demonstrating that he plans to indict everyone in the Trump-Russia scandal who committed any sort of crime, including transactional crimes like lying to federal investigators
Sessions is politically savvy enough to have understood for some time now that he was going to be charged with felony perjury. It’s why we asked if he’s cut a plea deal which would allow him to retain his Attorney General job and be Mueller’s man on the inside. That premise has since been bolstered thanks to a new report from Reuters (link) that Sessions also lied about having pushed back against the Trump campaign’s ideas about conspiring with Russia.
Legally speaking, it may be tricky to prove that Jeff Sessions was in fact conspiring against the United States when he kept meeting with the Russian Ambassador during the course of the election. Robert Mueller won’t get the Ambassador’s cooperation with regard to what Sessions said during those meetings. It may be easier for Mueller to prove that Sessions obstructed justice by helping Donald Trump retaliate against McCabe, a key witness. But it is very easy for Mueller to prove that Sessions lied under oath about it, which is an imprisonable felony – even easier now that Mueller has him nailed on at least two kinds of lies. If Sessions hasn’t already cut a deal, he’s now facing significant prison time.
