Attorney General Jeff Sessions, facing a chorus of criticism over his contacts with the Russian ambassador, recused himself Thursday from any current or future investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. His conversations with the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, came amid suspected Russian hacking directed at Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Mr. Sessions said he made the decision after meeting with senior career officials at the Justice Department. He said he would not take part in any investigations “related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.”
He also strongly denied that any of his conversations with Russian officials were related to the presidential campaign. And he said he did not intend to deceive the Senate when he said he had no such meetings with Russian officials.
The remarks by Mr. Sessions came not long after President Trump on Thursday expressed his support for Mr. Sessions and said he should not recuse himself from the investigation. Mr. Sessions was a key adviser and surrogate for Mr. Trump’s campaign.
But of course this means that Sessions thinks he is off the hook. Nobody else in the AG's office is going to call for a special prosecutor and be immediately fired by Trump. Again, Republicans are clearly hoping that this story goes away now.
Only one problem: it won't. The FBI investigation is ongoing. And leaks from the intelligence community are rapidly turning into a real problem for the Trump regime. If it turns out Sessions made any phone calls to Kislyak, then we could find out what was said there, the same way we did with Flynn.
At this point Sessions is still in the hotseat, and the temperature's only going to go up.
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