Jeff Sessions’s testimony that he opposed a proposal for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who said they had spoken about the matter to investigators with special counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.
The attorney general testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by the former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a 31 March 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.
“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House judiciary committee, when asked if he shut down Papadopoulos’s proposal. Sessions has since been interviewed by Mueller.
Three people who attended the March meeting said they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators working on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’s idea.
What are the allegations in the Trump-Russia investigation?
What are the most serious allegations?
The investigation into Trump and his team appears to encompass allegations of collusion, obstruction of justice, abuse of power and charges specific to Trump aides and former aides.
Any case along these lines against the president would be historic. Both of the presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the past century, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, faced obstruction of justice and abuse of power charges.
Is there anything we don't know?
It's important to note that the work of the special counsel is secret, and the public has no way of knowing for certain what charges prosecutors may be weighing against the Trump team or, in what would be an extraordinary development, against the president himself.
What can the special counsel investigate?
Mueller is authorized to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" and related matters. In other words, potential collusion during the 2016 election.
But so-called “collusion” is only part of it. The special counsel has the broad authority to build a prosecution wherever the inquiry may lead. The investigation has already resulted in charges against former Trump aides such as tax fraud that do not relate directly to election activity.
Anything else?
In the course of the investigation, Trump's past business practices have also come under scrutiny. With his first indictments of people in Trump's orbit, the special counsel has demonstrated an appetite for the prosecution of alleged white-collar crimes. The president has denied all wrongdoing.
Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP
Another meeting attendee, JD Gordon, who was the Trump campaign’s director of national security, told media outlets in November that Sessions strongly opposed Papadopoulos’s proposal and said no one should speak of it again.
In response to a request for comment, Gordon said on Saturday he stood by his statement.
A justice department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, declined to comment beyond Sessions’s prior testimony. The special counsel’s office also declined to comment. Spokeswomen for the Democrats and Republicans on the House judiciary committee did not immediately comment.
Reuters was unable to determine if Mueller is examining discrepancies in accounts of the March 2016 meeting.
The three accounts, which have not been reported, raise new questions about Sessions’s testimony regarding contacts with Russia during the campaign.
Sessions failed to disclose to Congress meetings he had with the then Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and testified in October that he was not aware of any campaign representatives communicating with Russians.
Some Democrats have seized on discrepancies in Sessions’s testimony to suggest the attorney general may have committed perjury. A criminal charge would require showing Sessions intended to deceive. Sessions told the House judiciary committee he had always told the truth and testified to the best of his recollection.
Legal experts expressed mixed views about the significance of the contradictions cited by the three sources. Sessions could argue he misremembered events or perceived his response in a different way, making any contradictions unintentional, some experts said.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Sessions’s words might be too vague to form the basis of a perjury case because there could be different interpretations of what the term “pushing back” means.
“If you’re talking about false statements, prosecutors look for something that is concrete and clear,” he said.
Other legal experts, however, said repeated misstatements by Sessions could enable prosecutors to build a perjury case against him.
“Proving there was intent to lie is a heavy burden for the prosecution,” said Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor. “But now you have multiple places where Sessions has arguably made false statements.”
The March 2016 campaign meeting in Washington was captured in a photo Trump posted on Instagram of roughly a dozen men sitting around a table, including Trump, Sessions and Papadopoulos.
Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts, is now cooperating with Mueller.
According to court documents released after his guilty plea, Papadopoulos said at the campaign meeting he had connections who could help arrange a meeting between Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Papadopoulos continued to pursue Russian contacts after the March 2016 meeting and communicated with some campaign officials about his efforts, according to the court documents.
Trump has said he does not remember much of what happened at the “very unimportant” meeting. Trump has said he did not meet Putin before becoming president.
Moscow has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia.
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