Sessions staunchly defended his honesty about Russia, despite having to repeatedly revise his accounts. “I’ve always told the truth,” he said in his opening statement. Citing the chaos of the campaign, he said he hadn’t recalled recently revealed interactions regarding Russia with Trump staffers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, both of whom were in contact with Russian officials during the campaign.

“All of you have been in a campaign. But most of you have not participated in a presidential campaign. And none of you had a part in the Trump campaign,” Sessions said. “It was a brilliant campaign in many ways, but it was a form of chaos every day from day one. We traveled all the time, sometimes to several places in one day. Sleep was in short supply … I have been asked to remember details from a year ago, such as who I saw on what day, in what meeting, and who said what when.”

At his confirmation hearings in January, Sessions told Senator Al Franken, “I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” That turned out not to be true: Sessions had met with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice during the campaign, one at the Republican National Convention. Later, in October, he told Franken that with regards to the question of whether any campaign surrogates had been in touch with the Russians, “I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did, and I don’t believe it happened.”

However, two new developments suggested that was untrue. First, in a guilty plea, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos admitted attending a March 31, 2016, meeting with both Sessions and Donald Trump in which he said he could arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The same week, staffer Carter Page testified to the House Intelligence Committee that he had mentioned an impending trip to Russia to Sessions after a June dinner.

Faced with these revelations, Sessions had to strike a nuanced position: He told the House panel on Tuesday that on the one hand he sincerely had not recalled the meeting with Papadopoulos until recent press reports, but that he had also acted decisively, in the meeting that he had forgotten, to push back on Papadopoulos, and to tell him he was not authorized to speak to the Russians on behalf of the campaign. (Sessions said he had no recollection of his conversation with Page, which Page said was very brief.)

Democrat after Democrat hammered Sessions on his previous testimony, and time after time, Sessions either insisted that his prior remarks, if inaccurate, had been simply the product of misremembering. In other cases, he filibustered on answers, taking advantage of the tight five-minute time limit for each member to ask questions. Many Democrats asked Sessions to answer questions with yes or no, and he repeatedly protested that he could not.