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[scion]

Jeff Sessions Displays Unsteady Recall on Trump-Russia Matters

By NICHOLAS FANDOS and MATT APUZZOUPDATED 7:10 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/us/politics/jeff-sessions-congress-russia.html

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, showed selective recall on the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts.

• Mr. Sessions said he had “no reason to doubt these women” who have accused the man who wants his old Senate seat, Roy S. Moore, of seeking sexual or romantic favors from them as teenagers.

• Mr. Sessions was asked about his direction that the department consider a special counsel to investigate Mr. Trump’s political opponents, including Hillary Clinton.

Sessions: I don’t recall Russia reports, but I shot down Trump-Putin meeting.

Mr. Sessions denied that he lied in October when he testified that he knew of nobody in the Trump campaign who had contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign. “And I don’t believe it happened,” he said.

Court records later revealed that Mr. Sessions led a March 2016 meeting in which George Papadopoulos, a campaign aide, discussed his Russian ties and suggested setting up a meeting between Mr. Trump. and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president.

“I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports,” Mr. Sessions said.

Mr. Sessions testified Tuesday that was still hazy on the details about what Mr. Papadopoulos had proposed.

But on one matter, he said his memory is clear: he said he shot down Mr. Papadopoulos’ idea of a Trump-Putin meeting. And he said he told Mr. Papadopoulos that he was not authorized to represent the campaign in such discussions.

To sum up: Mr. Sessions said he could not remember much about Russian influence on the Trump campaign, except when he could block such influence.

Applying the Sessions standard on perjury to … Jeff Sessions.

As Democrats repeatedly put heat on Mr. Sessions over the evolution of his testimony before Congress, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, invoked an unexpected ostensible ally: Senator Jeff Sessions.

Holding up a speech he said Mr. Sessions had given on the Senate floor during the proceedings to remove President Bill Clinton from office, Mr. Jeffries said Mr. Sessions had then justified his vote for removal by saying that he would not hold the president to a different standard than a young police officer he had prosecuted years before for lying under oath.

“You stated that you refused to hold a president accountable to a different standard than the young police officer who you prosecuted,” Mr. Jeffries said. “Let me be clear: The attorney general of the United States of America should not be held to a different standard than the young police officer whose life you ruined by prosecuting him for perjury.”

Mr. Sessions vehemently disagreed with the comparison, repeatedly calling Mr. Jeffries suggestion “unfair.”

“Mr. Jeffries, nobody, nobody, not you or anyone else should be prosecuted, not be accused of perjury for answering the question the way I did in this hearing,” Mr. Sessions said. “I have always tried to answer the questions fairly and accurately.”

A Republican-Sessions divide on government surveillance.

While the Trump campaign contacts with Russia is the main recurring theme, a separate subplot has emerged: surveillance.

The statute by which Congress legalized the Bush administration’s post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, is set to expire at the end of 2017 if lawmakers do not extend it.

The current law permits the government to collect from American internet companies, without a warrant, the messages of foreigners abroad who have been targeted for intelligence purposes — even when they are communicating with an American. Leaders from both parties on the House Judiciary Committee have agreed to push a bill, dubbed the USA Liberty Act, that would impose some new limitations on the surveillance program as a condition of extending it.

The Liberty Act would require government agents to obtain a warrant from a judge to scrutinize such messages when the information pertains to Americans connected to a criminal investigation, though not when it comes to a national-security investigation. The Trump administration opposes that idea.

Among others, Rep. Ted Poe, Republican of Texas, pressed Mr. Sessions about that issue. Invoking the language of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, he noted that the information in the internet repository was seized without a warrant, and said querying the database amounts to a search. He demanded, “you don’t think probable cause and a warrant is required to go into that information?”

Mr. Sessions replied that the federal courts “have so held,” adding “I agree with the courts, not you, congressman, on that.”

In fact, while it is true that several judges have upheld the use of evidence derived from the program in terrorism-related cases; the issue of whether evidence derived from it may be used in ordinary criminal cases — the type the Liberty Act proposal addresses — has not been adjudicated.

Mr. Poe responded: “It is the responsibility of Congress to set the privacy standard for Americans.”

The Constitution supports the view that the government should get a warrant before it searches through internet databases without a warrant, he said. Otherwise, “that is spying on Americans.”

Sessions abandons fellow Alabamian Roy Moore.

Mr. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee, “I have no reason to doubt these women” who have accused Roy S. Moore of seeking sex or romance with them when they were teenagers.

Mr. Moore is seeking to fill the Alabama Senate seat that Mr. Sessions gave up when he was confirmed as attorney general. And Mr. Sessions remains a popular figure in Alabama. The attorney general’s views matter in his home state.

What’s more, Republican leaders in Washington are discussing whether Mr. Sessions should launch a write-in campaign to reclaim his seat. If that does not happen and Mr. Moore prevails in the Dec. 12 special election, there is talk of expelling the jurist from the Senate and prevailing on Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, to appoint Mr. Sessions back to the Senate.

The twin hearings: Russia — and anything but Russia.

Mr. Sessions’ appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday was really a twofer. There was the hearing on the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, guided by the committee’s Democrats who single-mindedly bored in on the topic.

Then there was the hearing-on-any-topic-other-than-Russia orchestrated by the committee’s Republicans, which scurried over federal eavesdropping law, rising crime, immigration and Hillary Clinton.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/us/politics/jeff-sessions-congress-russia.html