Lawfare: Ten Questions for Jeff Sessions

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Ten Questions that the Senate Judiciary Committee Should Ask Jeff Sessions
By Matthew Miller
Monday, October 16, 2017, 9:30 AM

On Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time since his confirmation hearing in January. To say his tenure since taking office has been rocky would be an understatement. In the past nine months, Sessions has been accused of lying under oath to Congress about meetings with Russian officials during last year’s presidential campaign; forced to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation; rebuked for belittling a federal judge over the president’s travel ban; publicly attacked and humiliated by the president; and bullied into offering his resignation, which the president then declined to accept.

Senators obviously have a lot to cover, and Sessions showed in his June appearance before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee that he will try to avoid answering some of the most pressing questions. Here are ten important ones on which Senators should press him.


1. Were you aware when you signed off on FBI Director Jim Comey’s firing that the president was unhappy with his handling of the Russia case?

Sessions refused to answer this question when it was posed by Senator Diane Feinstein during his intelligence committee appearance, claiming he needed to preserve the president’s right to assert executive privilege over confidential conversations. But President Trump has not asserted executive privilege over these conversations, and as Senate Democrats pointed out in a letter last week, Sessions has not formally asked Congress to hold its questions “in abeyance” while he does. There is longstanding precedent for litigating or negotiating executive privilege claims, but Sessions, like other administration officials, has sought to reap the benefits of executive privilege without the president actually asserting it, leaving Congress with no ability to challenge its validity.

More: https://www.lawfareblog.com/ten-questions-senate-judiciary-committee-should-ask-jeff-sessions