Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions Lied Under Oath Orally And In Writing In Attorney General Confirmation Hearings

As part of the Confirmation process for Attorney General,

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R) takes oath before his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his Confirmation Hearing to be United States Attorney General.

in January, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked nominee Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for answers to written questions, one which was: “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?”

Sessions wrote a one-word response: “No.”

During the Confirmation Hearings before the Judiciary Committee on January 10, Minnesota Senator Al Franken (D) asked Senator Sessions, “If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”

Senator Jeff Sessions stated, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Jeff Sessions: “I did not have communications with the Russians.” (C-SPAN)

Justice Department officials said that Sessions met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak: Privately on September 8, 2016, in Sessions’ office in his capacity as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, and as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers, and earlier in July.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokesperson for Attorney General Sessions, said he “met with the Ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

Recently, when confronted with evidence which directly contradicts his written and oral testimony under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions, who is now Attorney General, issued a statement, which in part said, “I never met with any Russian officials.”

Attorney General Confirmation Hearing, Day 1 Part 1
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be attorney general in the Donald Trump administration. He was introduced by Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Richard Shelby (R-AL). Committee members in this first portion questioned him on such issues as marijuana legalization, the Fair Sentencing Act, government surveillance and interrogation techniques. Of interrogation techniques, Senator Sessions called waterboarding “absolutely improper and illegal.” The hearing was interrupted several times by protestors in the audience.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?420932-1/attorney-general-nominee-jeff-sessions-testifies-confirmation-hearing

Excerpt of Spymaster: My Thirty-two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West by former KGB General Oleg Kalugin, who “outed” Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as a KGB agent. Kalugin was once Vladimir Putin’s boss, and is now a naturalized American citizen.

UPDATE:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a Press Conference this afternoon (Thursday, 2 March 2017) around 4PM ET, to address questions that arose after his confirmation as Attorney General about meetings he had as a Senator with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, an avowed former KGB agent who was “outed” by former Russian KGB General Oleg Kalugin in his 2009 book “Spymaster” which was originally published in 1994 in the United States by St. Martin’s Press as “The First Directorate.” Kalugin wrote that “This problem was on Andropov’s mind when he received in his office Kislyak, KGB resident in France.”
[Ed. NOTE: The KGB is now known as the GRU.]

Sessions said in part that, “I did not respond by referring to the two meetings, one very brief after a speech, and one with two of my senior staffers, professional staffers with the Russian ambassador in Washington, where no such things were discussed.

“In my reply to the question — my reply to the question of Senator Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time. I appreciate that some have taken the view that this was a false comment. That is not my intent. That is not correct.

“I will write the Judiciary Committee soon, today or tomorrow, to explain this testimony for the record.”

QUESTION: Two questions if I may. One, you were already considering recusal before today, is that correct? And secondly, when you answered Senator Franken’s question, were you just not thinking of the meeting with the Russian ambassador, or did you not consider it relevant?

SESSIONS: I was taken aback a little bit about this brand new information, this allegation that a surrogate — and I had been called a surrogate for Donald Trump — had been meeting continuously with Russian officials, and that’s what I — it struck me very hard, and that’s what I focused my answer on. And in retrospect, I should have slowed down and said, “But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times, and that would be the ambassador.”

Attorney General Sessions: “I have recused myself…” (C-SPAN)
Published on March 2, 2017
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces in a press conference he would recuse himself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign. He did so in response to reports he failed to disclose at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the campaign. http://cs.pn/2lZwZqn