It’s the biggest blockbuster Washington drama since ... last week.
The appearance by Attorney General Jeff Sessions before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday afternoon may lack the hearing-of-the-century theatrics surrounding former FBI director, James Comey.
But his testimony will be a dramatic sequel to the fired FBI chief’s tour de force that twisted a knife in US President Donald Trump’s administration over the Russia investigation and still has Washington buzzing, CNN reported.
It also means the Russia storm will continue to swamp Trump’s agenda. In addition to his testimony, the fate of Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also in the air.
Senators will challenge Sessions on issues raised by Comey’s testimony, about his own behavior, new questions about his meetings with Russian officials and possibly his apparently tense relations with Trump.
And while Sessions agreed to testify publicly, there are questions about his motivations. Does he simply want to get his side of the story out following Comey’s testimony? Or does his appearance represent a White House-orchestrated counter attack following the damaging Comey testimony?
What Sessions Faces
Sessions’ appearance is not without risk.
The former Alabama senator put in a shaky performance under questioning from his former colleagues during his confirmation hearing. His failure to disclose meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak forced him to later amend his testimony and added fuel to the Russia intrigue swirling around Washington.
“It is really unclear what he is going to say, and I am a little bit surprised because in the past, he has gotten into trouble when he said things and they turned out not to be entirely true,” said Jens Ohlin, a professor of law at Cornell University.
“I am not sure he is the best performer under questioning from fellow senators. He is used to being on the other side. The more he says, the more he risks being called out for inconsistencies.”
Questions for Attorney General
Sessions is vulnerable in at least three areas.
First, Democrats will grill him on Comey’s revelations—for instance, his claim that Sessions appeared to recognize the inappropriateness of Trump’s request to meet the FBI director alone on February 14.
Comey testified that in the privacy of the Oval Office, the president asked him to let the investigation into former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, drop.
“My sense was the attorney general knew he shouldn’t be leaving, which is why he was lingering,” Comey said last week.
Later, Comey said he was so uncomfortable that he went to Sessions to “implore” him “to prevent any future direct communication between the president and me”.
Secondly, Sessions is likely to be asked why, after recusing himself from oversight of claims of Russian election meddling because he was on Trump’s campaign team, he played a key role in the decision to recommend the president fire Comey last month.
In his defense, Sessions could cite a memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that criticized Comey over the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
But Trump’s subsequent statement on NBC that he was thinking of the Russia probe when he sacked the FBI director would call into question any such explanation by Sessions.
A third area of vulnerability for Sessions also arose from the Comey hearing. The former FBI director hinted in the committee’s closed session that there may have been a third, unreported meeting between Sessions and Kislyak, people familiar with the briefing said.
CNN previously reported that congressional investigators are examining whether Sessions had an additional private meeting with the Russian ambassador in April 2016 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
In his confirmation hearing, Sessions testified that he did not have “communications” with the Russians during the presidential campaign.
When it later emerged he had in fact had several meetings with Kislyak, some Democrats accused him of lying to Congress and demanded his resignation.
