Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to testify openly before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, November 14th at 10am ET as part of the panel's routine oversight duties. He also will meet again behind closed doors with the House Intelligence Committee on November 30th.
Sessions likely will field pointed questions related to ongoing Russia investigations given recent revelations of even more contact between Trump campaign advisors and Russian operatives and officials than previously disclosed.
According to the documents, George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, said at a March 31, 2016, meeting of Trump foreign policy advisers “that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.”
Both Sessions and Trump attended that meeting, according to a photo posted on Trump’s Instagram account.
Democrats want to question Sessions because, in October, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a continuing exchange between the Trump campaign and Russian government intermediaries “did not happen, at least not to my knowledge and not with me.”
Sessions is also bound to face questions about the recent testimony of another campaign adviser, Carter Page, who told the intelligence panel last week that he informed Sessions in July 2016 about his own planned trip to Moscow, one that has drawn scrutiny from FBI investigators.
Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees are considering asking Sessions to come back in for more questioning too.
So far, it’s mostly Democrats demanding explanations for undisclosed conversations and business investments. But in the past few days, some Republicans have also begun to join the chorus.
“Jeff, you need to tell us everything you know about Russia,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday [November 5th].
The Senate intelligence committee's top Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, said he and panel chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would be discussing whether to engage with Sessions again to "clarify what happened or didn't happen with these meetings with Mr. Papadopoulos."
Sessions testified before Burr and Warner's committee in June that he didn't know whether Page had meetings with Russian officials during the campaign — despite Page's testimony last week that he had told Sessions about his Moscow sojourn.
Lawmakers Want Sessions and Kushner to Clear Up Their Russia Testimonies (Daily Beast)
House Democrats prepare to pepper Sessions with questions about Papadopoulos (Politico)
U.S. attorney general due to face Democrats' Russia questions next week (Reuters)
House panel to interview Russian-American lobbyist, Sessions (AP)