Sen. Al Franken Alan (Al) Stuart FrankenPeterson faces fight of his career in deep-red Minnesota district Getting tight — the psychology of cancel culture Tina Smith wins Democratic Senate primary in Minnesota MORE (D-Minn.) on Thursday called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump's policies on refugees are as simple as ABCs Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez call for convention to decide Puerto Rico status White House officials voted by show of hands on 2018 family separations: report MORE to recuse himself immediately from any investigation into Russian involvement in the presidential election.

In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Franken said it was the "very minimum" that Sessions could do following a report that surfaced late Wednesday that he had contact with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during last year's campaign.

"He certainly at the very minimum should recuse himself. This just makes common sense," Franken said. "He should recuse himself from any investigation, any investigation the FBI is doing, any investigation at all into the ties of the Trump campaign to the Russians as the Russians were interfering with our Democratic elections."

Franken also said he wants Sessions to answer further questions.

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"I would like to see him answer questions and answer questions at a press conference ... and then we decide if he should resign or not," Franken said.

The senator noted that Sessions's testimony at his confirmation hearing in January contradicts the reports of Sessions's communications with Russia's ambassador.

"For him to say, or for their spokesman to say he had no recollection of his conversation and later to say, 'Well, I did talk to him but we didn’t talk about the election,' that’s contradictory," Franken said. "His responses to me weren’t accurate."

At his confirmation hearing, Franken asked Sessions what he would do if he learned there was evidence that the Trump campaign or any of Trump's associates communicated with Russian officials during the presidential race.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions responded. “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians."