Jeff Sessions Will Testify Before Senate In Open Session

WASHINGTON, DC — Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday where he will face questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election and his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Sessions' testimony will come less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey testified before the same committee, answering questions surrounding his firing by President Donald Trump.

Sessions will testify in an open session, according to a joint statement sent out by the chairman of the committee, Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia. When Sessions announced that he would appear before the committee, it was unclear whether it would be in an open or a closed setting. Many Democratic lawmakers had called on Sessions to testify in an open session, arguing that the American people needed to hear the whole truth regarding the Russia investigation. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

Sessions was originally scheduled to appear before a committee to testify about the Department of Justice's budget, however he wrote in a letter to the committee's chair that several members had said they would question him about the Russia investigation. Instead, Sessions said he would appear before the Senate committee in light of Comey's testimony so that he could address the matters in an appropriate forum.

In Comey's prepared statement before the committee and his testimony on Thursday, the former FBI director mentioned Sessions a handful of times. In his written statement, Comey said that after a counter-terrorism briefing at the Oval Office where President Trump asked everyone to clear the room so he could be alone with the then-FBI director, Sessions lingered in the office, leading Comey to believe the attorney general knew it was inappropriate for the president to be alone with the FBI director.

After that one-on-one meeting where Comey says Trump said to he hoped Comey could let the investigation into former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn go, the FBI leadership team agreed it did not make sense to report the matter to Sessions because it expected him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. However, it was not clear what led Comey or the senior leadership team at the FBI to believe Sessions would recuse himself. Sessions ultimately did recuse himself once it was revealed that he had met with the Russian ambassador but had not disclosed the information to the Senate.

Comey also said in his testimony that he had asked Sessions to prevent any future one-on-one communications between him and the president. Sessions did not respond to Comey, and in his testimony, Comey said he took the attorney general's body language to mean he did not intend to do anything about it, though he added that he could be wrong.

Patch will update this report.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File