Liberal Forum

SESSIONS SUDDENLY REMEMBERS RUSSIA CONVERSATION HE SAID DIDN‘T HAPPEN

The attorney general’s memory has been miraculously restored.


Back in June, there was some cause for concern that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was having memory problems.

When questioned from multiple angles during multiple appearances before Congressional investigators about the Trump campaign‘s relationship to Russia, Sessions‘s consistent refrain was: “I don’t recall.”
He gave an equally evasive response when Minnesota Senator Al Franken specifically asked whether surrogates from the Trump campaign had communicated with Russians during the 2016 election in October.

“I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did, and I don’t believe it happened,” Sessions told the Senate Intelligence Committee under oath.
(He made similar statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee.)

Now, however, Sessions has reportedly changed his tune.

Citing a source familiar with Sessions’s thinking, NBC News reported on Thursday that the attorney general—who served as a top Trump surrogate and headed the then-presidential hopeful’s national security team—does in fact recall rejecting George Papadopoulos’s offer to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, after the Republican candidate stopped short of ruling out the idea.

“The March 31 comments by this Papadopoulos person did not leave a lasting impression,” the source told NBC News.

“As far as Sessions seemed to be concerned, when he shut down this idea of Papadopoulos engaging with Russia, that was the end of it and he moved the meeting along to other issues.”

The source added that Papadopoulos was viewed by those in attendance “as someone who didn't have a lot of credibility.”

Sessions, who recused himself from the ongoing Justice Department probe amid questions of his impartiality earlier this year, faced a fresh wave of scrutiny after it was revealed on Monday that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with the Russians during an interview in January.

According to court documents, Papadopoulos told special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators that at a national-security meeting on March 31, 2016, he “stated, in sum and substance, that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President [Vladimir] Putin.”

Both Trump and Sessions were unmistakably present at the meeting.