Sessions' Meetings With Russians Under Scrutiny: Reports

WASHINGTON, DC — Democratic Senators asked former FBI Director James Comey to investigate Attorney General Jeff Sessions for perjury after he misled the Senate during his confirmation testimony by falsely stating that he had never met with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, CNN reported Thursday. These meetings continue to dog Sessions, who is also the subject of a NBC report that claims he, along with then-candidate Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, had an as yet undisclosed meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign.

"Earlier this year, Attorney General Sessions provided false testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in response to our questions regarding his contacts with Russian officials," Sens. Al Franken and Patrick Leahy said Thursday in a statement. "The attorney general never fully explained or even acknowledged the misrepresentations in his testimony, and we remained concerned that he had still not been forthcoming about the extent of his contacts with Russian officials."

As CNN first reported, the Democratic senators, both on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Comey to investigate Sessions for perjury in a letter first sent in March; after Comey was fired by Trump, an action that still plagues the president, the senators sent a similar letter to now acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Comey will appear next Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify on the Russia investigation and related matters.

Perhaps even more damaging for Sessions and the Trump administration as a whole, NBC News reports that five anonymous current and former American officials have confirmed that classified intelligence suggests that Trump, Sessions and Trump's son-in-law and now senior adviser Kushner met privately with Kislyak during the campaign at Washington's Mayflower Hotel.

This meeting, if it took place, would be in addition to the two meetings with Kislyak that Sessions failed to disclose, one of which took place during the Republican National Convention and another in September privately in Sessions' office. Kushner and Trump have denied that the meeting reported by NBC News took place.

Trump has consistently said that the Russia story and investigation are a "hoax" and a "witch hunt." However, a consistent stream of leaks and stories connecting the president and his team to Russian officials continue to paint a complicated web of interactions that are difficult to explain.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images