Senate Asked FBI To Investigate Whether Jeff Sessions Committed Perjury
Jeff Sessions Is Being Investigated By The FBI For Perjury.
There has been an avalanche of Jeff Sessions related news over the last 24 hours.
First, we learned that Congress is investigating a third and previously undisclosed meeting between Sessions and the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Then, late Wednesday, Senator Al Franken confirmed to Lawrence O’Donnell that the Senate was aware of the meeting and that was a discrepancy between how the incident was characterized and the intelligence the Senate had access to about the meeting.
On Thursday morning NBC News reported that “Five current and former U.S. officials said they are aware of classified intelligence suggesting there was some sort of private encounter between Trump and his aides and the Russian envoy, despite a heated denial from Sessions, who has already come under fire for failing to disclose two separate contacts with Kislyak.”
And now we learn via CNN that the Senate has asked the FBI to investigate Attorney General Jeff Sessions for perjury over lying to the Senate during his confirmation hearing.
According to CNN, “Sens. Patrick Leahy and Al Franken — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee — sent the requests to Comey and, later, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe in three letters dated March 20, April 28 and May 12.”
“We are concerned about Attorney General Sessions’ lack of candor to the committee and his failure thus far to accept responsibility for testimony that could be construed as perjury,” Franken and Leahy wrote to Comey in their first request,” Franken and Leahy wrote in their initial letter to Comey.
“Earlier this year, Attorney General Sessions provided false testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in response to our questions regarding his contacts with Russian officials,” Franken and Leahy said in a statement Thursday.
“The attorney general never fully explained or even acknowledged the misrepresentations in his testimony, and we remained concerned that he had still not been forthcoming about the extent of his contacts with Russian officials.”
Leahy and Franken also said that if Jeff Sessions did commit perjury then he needs to resign.
“We served with the attorney general in the Senate and on the Judiciary Committee for many years,” they wrote. “We know he would not tolerate dishonesty if he were in our shoes. If it is determined that the attorney general still has not been truthful with Congress and the American people about his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign, he needs to resign.”
