Franken Wants Sessions to Testify Again
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday strongly defended U.South. President Donald Trump's firing of James Comey, linking the FBI director's abrupt dismissal to his handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail server investigation.
Sessions, appearing earlier the Senate Judiciary Commission, said it was "the start fourth dimension I'm aware of" in which an FBI director had performed the traditional role of Justice Section prosecutors by announcing on his own the decision of a federal investigation — that no charges would be brought against Clinton.
ABOVE: Jeff Sessions and Al Franken get into heated substitution during Sessions' advent before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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He said he was further galled when Comey, weeks earlier his firing, insisted to Congress that he would accept taken the same deportment again.
Under questioning by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sessions refused to say whether he also discussed with Trump Comey'southward interest in the Russian federation investigation.
Though Sessions refused to hash out his private conversations with Trump, he said the president had asked him and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for their recommendations well-nigh what to do with Comey.
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"He did ask for our written opinion and we submitted that to him," Sessions said under questioning from Feinstein of California, the committee'south acme Democrat. "It did not correspond any change in either i of ours opinions."
Comey's firing received new attention earlier in the day when Trump tweeted, based on newly released individual FBI emails, that Comey had prematurely exonerated Clinton.
The routine oversight hearing is Sessions' first earlier the committee since his January confirmation, and information technology comes as has worked quickly to reshape the section with an intense focus on immigration, drugs, gangs and violent crime.
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He was probable to confront questions from lawmakers about his swift undoing of Obama-era protections for gay and transgender people and his rollback of criminal justice policies that aimed to reduce the federal prison population, among other changes he has made in nine months since taking office.
Sessions has tried to pressure so-called sanctuary cities into cooperating with federal immigration authorities by threatening to withhold grant money, and he was the public face of the Trump administration's conclusion to end a plan benefiting hundreds of thousands of young people who entered the U.S. illegally equally children. Congress is seeking a legislative solution to extend the protections before recipients' work permits elapse.
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Lawmakers were expected to ask him most the investigation into Trump campaign connections to Russia, which continues to cast a shadow over his tenure. Sessions recused himself from that probe, a decision that still frustrates Trump, who subjected him to a solid week of blistering public criticism this summer.
He could also be asked well-nigh any communication he'due south had with the team of investigators led past Robert Mueller, the Justice Department's special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation.
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Information technology is standard policy for attorneys full general to appear each twelvemonth before the Justice Department'south congressional overseers on the House and Senate judiciary committees.
Yet, in a reflection of the extent to which the Russia investigation and his own role as a Trump campaign marry have dominated public attention, Sessions made his first appearance on Capitol Hill every bit attorney general before the Senate Intelligence Committee. There, he faced hours of questioning about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States and his determination to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Democratic senators accept already fabricated clear they want Sessions to particular his private conversations with Trump, peculiarly in the run-up to the Comey'southward firing, or announce that Trump is invoking executive privilege to protect those communications. Sessions repeatedly refused to discuss his talks with Trump during his three-hour appearance before the Senate intelligence console.
He did not say he was using executive privilege, but rather adhering to longstanding tradition of Justice Department leaders to refrain from revealing the contents of private conversations with the president. That explanation left many Democrats unsatisfied and is unlikely to put to an end demands for detailed accounts of those conversations.
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Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/3811016/jeff-sessions-senate-testifies-trump-comey/
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