Jeff Sessions's puzzling press conference
By Aaron Blake March 2 at 5:01 PM
Attorney General Jeff Sessions just announced that he will recuse himself from any investigations involving the Trump campaign a response to the heat he's taken after it was revealed that he failed to disclose contacts with Russia's ambassador last year.
The move is clearly intended to stanch the bleeding. But in the course of making his announcement, Sessions didn't do himself too many favors.
In his initial statement, Sessions maintained that he had done nothing wrong. He said that his response at his confirmation hearing to Sen. Al Franken's (D-Minn.) question about contacts with Russia was honest and correct as I understood it at the time. But he also said that he would nonetheless update the record to clear things up, and he conceded at the end of the news conference: In retrospect, I should've slowed down and said I did meet with one Russian official a couple times that would be the ambassador.
(Transcript of Jeff Sessionss recusal press conference, annotated)
So he didn't do anything wrong, but he should've done something else and will fix it. And also, the as I understood it at the time is pretty weasel-wordy. It sounds as though Sessions is saying he misunderstood the question, which is perhaps the best explanation he can offer, given how broad and unprompted his denial was. This is also, notably, something that could come up were he ever charged with perjuring himself. To commit perjury, you have to know you were lying; misunderstanding the question would apparently be his defense.
Sessions also opted to make some somewhat off-color and casual comments about the matter.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/02/jeff-sessionss-puzzling-press-conference/?utm_term=.8661723009ea&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
Eyeball_Kid
(7,434 posts)in the same manner: NO. That was before the live interview. He understood both questions and lied both times.
dalton99a
(81,599 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)ameriKKKan TRAITOR!!! Aldrich Ames comes to mind. Also, blackmail comes to mind as already having happened, how else could the russians have possibly known where and how to hack our election system?? I wish we could find the contacts boy-potus had with the russians and how much money exchanged hands in 'dealsl' between boy-potus and russia when he was a private citizen engaged in his con man businesses.
I sure would like to see an unwashed version of trumpchumps taxes. By now they have probably been 'cleaned up' by an army of accountants and lawyers.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Compare them line-by-line.