Jeff Sessions just had the worst day in Washington, but by his own measure of justice, it wasn’t bad enough.

After confirmation of news that he met twice with the Russian ambassador in 2016 and that investigators looked into those previously undisclosed contacts, he woke up to a very grim political fate. By midday the justice department was swarmed with protesters yelling “lock him up”; Keith Ellison, citing US Code – Section 1621 noted that lying under oath carries a potential five-year prison term”; Chuck Schumer had announced he should resign “for the good of the country”; and even Republican lawmakers were moonwalking quietly away.

In light of this unmitigated disaster, Sessions has announced he will recuse himself from all inquiry around Russia and the election, in consultation with his staff. “I asked for their candid and honest opinion,” Sessions said on Thursday of his role in the FBI’s Russia investigation. “My staff recommended recusal. They said that since I had involvement with the campaign I should not be involved in any campaign investigation … Therefore,” he concluded, “I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign.”



But recusal is not enough. And even Sessions, in similar circumstances, has admitted as much.



At issue is a private conversation he had in September with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, a meeting that took place during the height of concern regarding Russia’s cyber efforts to influence US presidential election.



But the bigger problem for Sessions is these revelations appear to be in direct conflict with what he has said previously – under oath. “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians,” he said in response to a question from Al Franken during a confirmation hearing back in January.

For the nation’s highest law enforcement officer to swear under oath he had no contact with the Russians during the campaign and for reports to surface otherwise is no small thing. And still more kerosene was thrown on Sessions fire by a letter written by Patrick Leahy in which he put the question to Sessions bluntly.



“Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote back during the confirmation process. Sessions answer was a categorical: “No.”



His defenders have made it clear they believe Sessions was entitled to make that succinct answer to a question framed narrowly about the election campaign, but the Franken question was more open – and his answer more troubling.

Sessions’s move to recuse himself this afternoon is a good first step, but Republicans’ refusal to defend him also signaled it was the only viable option. Even the Republican House oversight committee chair, Jason Chaffetz, a man who has long resisted calls to investigate Trump’s potential business conflicts of interest even as he has vowed to investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails with undying fervor, said early on Thursday morning that the step was necessary.



Among the only people who thought Sessions didn’t need to recuse himself, interestingly, was Trump. “I don’t think so,” he said, when asked on Thursday afternoon if recusal was necessary. (Trump also said he was unaware any such meetings took place).

There is, by contrast, evidence that even in Sessions’s own view of such matters, recusal doesn’t go nearly far enough.



Case in point: in the late 1990s Sessions argued that lying about sex in a deposition for a civil lawsuit constituted an impeachable offense. What then would be the proper response to a man charged with lying under oath about meeting with a rival foreign government?



At the very least, a criminal investigation with possible perjury charges, it seems.



Sessions insisted on Thursday afternoon that in his reply to Franken he was “honest and correct as I understood it at the time”. But that doesn’t make any sense: he had full knowledge of who he did and did not meet with.



Many legal experts agree recusal is not enough. Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe has argued Sessions has perjured himself, while Richard Painter, George W Bush’s chief ethics lawyer, put it in even starker terms. “Misleading the Senate in sworn testimony about one’s own contacts with the Russians is a good way to go to jail,” he said.

Analysis: outcry over Jeff Sessions's Russia ties could be big blow for Trump Read more

Then there’s the fact that it’s particularly difficult to fall back on the wisdom of Sessions’s staff given their bungling initial response to the revelation.

Their initial argument – that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador only in his official capacity as a member of the Senate armed services committee, not as an adviser to the Trump campaign – passed neither the common sense test, nor the reporting test (20 of the 26 members of that committee, including its chairman, John McCain, immediately said they’d had zero contact with the Russian ambassador in the last year).



We shouldn’t trust them now. Nor should we be distracted from the fact that there are many pressing questions Sessions has yet to answer.



What did he talk about with the Russian ambassador? Did Donald Trump or his top advisers know about meetings? Did he knowingly deceive Congress in his confirmation hearing? If he can’t provide satisfactory answers, it’s hard to see how he deserves his post.



And tellingly, his own response to the Monica Lewinsky scandal suggests as much. “I am concerned about a president under oath being alleged to have committed perjury,” Sessions said of Clinton in an interview with C-Span at the time. “I hope that he can rebut that and prove that did not happen.”



We hope so too, Mr Sessions. But right now, things don’t look so good: if you just sub “president” out for Jeff Sessions, the same thing is true.



For as he said himself in that very interview, “no one is above the law.”



How’s that for writing your own political epitaph?

