Recordings confirm Jeff Sessions negotiated with Russia on behalf of Donald Trump campaign
Jeff Sessions was having the worst week of anyone in the Donald Trump campaign until Sean Spicer resigned this morning. But as of this evening, Sessions may have just pulled back into the lead. The embattled Attorney General became particularly vulnerable when Trump publicly bashed him during an interview this week. But now it turns out the U.S. intel community has recordings that confirm Sessions negotiated with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on behalf of Donald Trump campaign.
The intel community intercepted two conversations that Kislyak had with the Kremlin, according to the Washington Post (link), in which he confirmed details of his meetings with Jeff Sessions. Kislyak told Moscow that he and Sessions had discussed key political issues that the Kremlin considered crucial, as they related to the Donald Trump campaign. This confirms that A) Sessions has been lying all along about the nature of his meetings, B) Sessions appears to have been in on the Trump-Russia collusion plot, and C) this new leak is strategically timed.
After Jeff Sessions was initially caught lying under oath about his meetings with the Russian government, he then changed his story to claim that he didn’t remember his conversations with Kislyak because they had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. He claimed that he had only been talking with Kislyak in his role as a Senator. But this now definitively nails Sessions as having not only lied about the meetings, but also lied under oath about the nature of the meetings. In terms of perjury, this erases the ‘I forgot’ defense that Sessions has been trying to cling to.
But perhaps more importantly, this leak was strategically timed to do damage. The intel community would have had these recordings for months at a minimum, yet is only now leaking them at a time when Jeff Sessions is uniquely vulnerable. This may be an effort on the part of investigators to force Sessions to resign to he can’t obstruct the probe, or even to force him to cut a deal against Donald Trump. Then again, this leak may be an effort on the part of Donald Trump to force Jeff Sessions out of office. Stay tuned.
