Sessions: “I don’t think it is right to accuse me of doing something wrong.”


Developments on Day 299 of the Trump Administration:

See also Taking Apart the Trump-Supported “Uranium One” Disinformation Campaign

Attorney General Can’t Remember Key Meeting…But Says He Acted Quickly

Offering yet another version of events in the Trump-Russia investigator, Jeff Sessions — a senior Trump campaign official and now Attorney General — says he could not recall a meeting discussing contacts that could lead to a Trump meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, Sessions then said that, despite having no memory of the meeting, he had quickly shut down the suggested links.

Testifying to the House Judiciary Committee, Sessions was questioned about a March 31, 2016 gathering of Trump’s “national security team”, which he chaired. George Papadopoulos, a Trump “foreign policy advisor” who pled guilty last month to lying to investigators, has said in subsequent testimony that he tabled the proposal of the Trump-Putin meeting, following initial contacts with a London-based professor with high-level Russian contacts.

See Timeline: Trump-Russia Connections and Clinton’s E-mails

Sessions said on Tuesday, “I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports….I have no clear recollection of the details of what [Papadopoulos] said….I pushed back against his suggestion.

The Attorney General tried to excuse his shifting recollection by saying that, while the Trump campaign was “brilliant”, “It was a form of chaos from Day 1.”

During his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions said he had not met any Russian officials, only for subsequent information to establish that he had seen the Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, on several occasions. The Attorney General then said that he thought the question was asked in the context of Russian election intereference, and that the brief encounters with Kislyak were not connected.

Last month he testified that he knew of nobody in the Trump campaign who had contacts with Russians@ “And I don’t believe it happened.”

Sessions complained yesterday, “You’re accusing me of lying about that?. I would say that’s not fair, colleagues. I don’t think it is right to accuse me of doing something wrong.”

Comedian and talk show host Stephen Colbert summarized:

Sessions: “Not Enough” For Special Counsel for Clinton Investigation

Sessions threw cold water on the campaign by some Republican legislators, backed by Donald Trump, for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton over the Clinton Foundation and the Obama Administration’s approval of the sale of a Canadian uranium mining company to Russian interests.

Earlier this week a Justice Department letter, responding to Congressional questions, that it would consider the matter raised speculation that Sessions was carrying out Trump’s political campaign to denigrate Clinton and divert attention from the Trump-Russia inquiry.

But other analysts suggested the Department’s reply was a routine holding response against demands for the special counsel, and Sessions appeared to back this up on Tuesday, also addressing the complaint of a GOP congressman that the Clinton campaign paid for research that led to an intelligence dossier of Trump-Russia contacts:

“Looks like” is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel. It would take a factual basis that meets the standards of a special counsel.

Claim: FBI Investigation of 60+ Russian Foreign Ministry Transactions “To Finance Election Campaign of 2016”

Buzzfeed reporters claim that more than 60 financial transfers, totaling more than $380,000, from the Russian Foreign Ministry to Russian embassies around the world are being investigated by the FBI to see if they were for influencing the US Presidential election.

One of the transactions, for almost $30,000 on August 3, carried the memo line “to finance election campaign of 2016″. It came from the Kremlin-backed VTB Bank and was moved through one of the Citibank accounts of the Russian Embassy in Washington.

The money wound up at Russian embassies in almost 60 countries from Afghanistan to Nigeria between August 3 and September 20, 2016. Most had the election memo line: Buzzfeed notes that seven nations had federal elections during the time span, including a vote for the Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament.

Neither the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Russian embassy in Washington responded to an initial request for comment, but Moscow has launched a vehement campaign of denial on social media and through Russian State outlets.

On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry told BuzzFeed that it had previously announced that it would have 364 polling stations in 145 countries for Russians living overseas to cast ballots in the September 18 election for the Duma.

The Russian Embassy in Washington added, “this attempt to artificially draw Russia and the Embassy to the internal US disagreements has failed in the most shameful manner.”

But an “FBI special agent” said:

We had an election and the intelligence community concluded Russia interfered in it. How could we not investigate a suspicious financial transaction that contained a memo that said, “Finance election campaign 2016?” Given the climate and what was in that memo line it would be very irresponsible for us not to investigate. It’s a good lead.


Trump Tweets About the Wrong Mass Shooting

Donald Trump tweets his concern over the latest mass shootings in the US, but mixes it up with killings from 10 days ago.

On Tuesday a gunman killed four people in a remote northern California community, although a larger death toll was averted when he was unable to break into an elementary school.

Trump confused the latest multiple killing with the deaths of 26 people and serious wounding of 20 others in mass shooting in Texas on November 5.