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 Sessions’s 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
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