I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that Senate confirmation hearings are under oath, and therefore Sessions has perjured himself. Last I checked, perjury was a felony.
What happens next?
What happens next?
"... the Attorney General must resign. Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country and must resign. There must be an independent, bipartisan, outside commission to investigate the Trump political, personal and financial connections to the Russians."
Maybe after they repeal the ACA and cut taxes on the rich they do something, but they'll need Trumps cooperation to make those first two things happen.
From the article: In January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to written questions. “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?” Leahy wrote.
Sessions responded with one word: “No.”
Justice officials said Sessions met with Kislyak on Sept. 8 in his capacity as a member of the armed services panel rather than in his role as a Trump campaign surrogate.
“He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee,” Flores said.
___
Unless they can prove that the meeting was related to the election then it seems unlikely that this was perjury.
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On Wednesday, a Justice Department official confirmed that Mr. Sessions had two conversations with Ambassador Kislyak last year, when he was still a senator, despite testifying at his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing that he had no contact with the Russians. At that hearing, Mr. Sessions was asked what he would do if it turned out to be true that anyone affiliated with the Trump team had communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign. He said he was “not aware of any of those activities.”
“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it,” Mr. Sessions said at the time.
"I have been called a surrogate at a time or two on that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians. Um. And I'm unable to comment on it."
The question posed to him during the hearing was did he meet with Russian government about the campaign. Senators meet ambassadors. It's what they do. As long as he didn't negotiate for Trump, it's all good.
That being said, a special bipartisan prosecutor makes sense. Session should recuse himself from this issue.
The oral question by Sen. Franken was more open ended, and Sessions response seemed even less ambiguous.
At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing,
Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he
would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone
affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the
Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.
“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He
added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in
that campaign and I did not have communications with the
Russians.”
Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations
relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in
detail what he discussed with Kislyak.
Assuming that Congress wants to make the actual precedent of pushing for criminal charges for perjury (hint: they don't) you would have to actually establish that perjury occurred. He was asked about whether he discussed the election, not whether he discussed anything at all.
The press really is running with this Russia stuff though. It's pretty impressive. What exactly is the angle? Why did Russia want Trump to win? Did he promise to hand over the Crimea or something? Does anyone know?
It's an unholy mess and Talking Points Memo seems to be doing the best job of tracking this facet of the ongoing trainwreck.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-...
There's also this fantastic New Yorker story just published that outlines the Russian position generally. Shorter: fucking with the U.S. was worth it to push back against American arrogance and to assert Russian worth on the world stage; didn't expect it to work this well.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and...
I was listening to this today [1], and it explained that Russia fully expected Clinton to win, and was just looking to make her presidency chaotic. You know had Hillary won, and news of Russian "hacking" reached Republicans, they would be reacting just as the Democrats are now, calling for investigations and lobbying charges of collusion with the Russians against Clinton. Trump even primed the base to accept that line of attack, calling the election rigged when it looked like he was going to lose (since that's always his reaction when he starts to lose).
That Trump won came as a shock to Putin, and now after a brief honeymoon with Trump, Putin has ordered to dial back praising Trump on national media.
So really, there may be no direct link between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling, but they certainly aren't doing themselves favors by lying about it. I could understand that the optics look bad, given the circumstances, but being caught lying about it looks exponentially worse, especially since sessions previously refused to recuse himself from the investigation into said contacts with Russians!