Sen. Duckworth Joins Call For Investigation Into AG Jeff Sessions

By aaroncynic in News on May 19, 2017 4:59PM



Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to be the U.S. Attorney General. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty.

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth joined a group of senators in a call for the Inspector General of the Department of Justice to investigate Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ involvement in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Duckworth and eight other senators sent a letter to the Inspector General Thursday saying that his role in Comey’s firing could be in violation from Sessions’ recusal from investigations into 2016 campaigns.

“Despite this recusal, Attorney General Sessions appears to have been intimately involved with the May 9, 2017 dismissal of Federal Bureau of Investigation (“F.B.I.”) Director James Comey, who was in charge of an investigation of the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia,” reads the letter. “On Monday, May 8, 2017, Attorney General Sessions went to the White House for a meeting with President Trump and Rod Rosenstein, his Deputy Attorney General, in order to discuss the removal of Director Comey.”

The letter is the latest in a series of moves by Democratic lawmakers to investigate and potentially hold the Trump administration accountable for a numerous and seemingly never-ending set of gaffes, missteps, scandals, and outright lies surrounding probes into the President’s potential ties to Russia during his campaign. Earlier this week both Duckworth and her colleague Senator Dick Durbin expressed their outrage towards Trump over him sharing classified intelligence with Russian officials, and praised the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead an investigation into Trump and Russia.





Appointing a special counsel is a positive step to help protect our democracy and ensure Trump-Russia ties are fully investigated https://t.co/Euqg1xa3vH — Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) May 17, 2017

I worked with Bob Mueller when he was at FBI over a span of more than 12 years. I have the highest regard for his integrity and intelligence — Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) May 18, 2017

“It is imperative that the American people have faith in the institutions that are investigating the influence a hostile foreign power may have had on our presidential campaign, election, and the current administration of President Trump,” the senators wrote. “We believe the Attorney General’s involvement in the termination of Director Comey has injected the exact “partiality” in these investigations he claimed to wish to avoid.”