Jeff Sessions must have been sick the day they taught “trial prep” in law school. He’s in trouble now, not because he’s a Klan sympathizer who has already started dismantling civil rights, but because he perjured himself like an incompetent first year attorney.

Jeff Sessions is in trouble because he went beyond the scope of the question, at his Senate confirmation hearing. The top lawyer in the land allowed himself to sound like a dog of a client who can’t follow simple instructions. There’s a reason why lawyers give limited, careful answers to questions. There’s a reason why lawyers practice with their clients, over and over again, to ONLY answer what the question asks and NO FURTHER.

You don’t extemporaneously editorialize. You don’t “flourish.” You answer the damn question and move on.

Sessions failed to do that, in spectacular fashion. Here’s the tape, LISTEN to the question.

Al Franken asked:

“If it’s true, it’s obviously pretty serious. And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian Government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”

Sessions’s response:

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

NOBODY ASKED YOU THAT, SENATOR! Sessions volunteered, UNPROVOKED, that he didn’t have communications with the Russians. What lawyer does that? A TERRIBLE ONE. A no good, very bad, Ken Starr-level idiot attorney answers a question he wasn’t even asked.

And that is why Sessions’s current excuse makes NO SENSE. From the Washington Post:

Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with [Russian Ambassador] Kislyak.

HE DIDN’T ANSWER THE LAWMAKERS’ QUESTIONS. Instead he made Kislyak relevant with his pompous, self-serving answer to a question nobody asked him. He opened the door, on himself. If you are going to volunteer that you “have been called a campaign surrogate” and “did not have communications with the Russians,” then it’s ON YOU to remember when you had communications with the Russians!

Bill Clinton wouldn’t concede the word “IS” in a deposition. That’s how lawyers roll. Sessions is out here giving up the whole damn store. And why? Why didn’t Sessions just answer Al Franken’s question? Because he was trying to AVOID saying he’d actually investigate ties between Russia and the President. He didn’t want to answer a question about whether he’d do his job, so instead he lied about an entirely different issue.

Does Sessions have to recuse himself because he is incapable of effective investigating Russian connections? Absolutely. Does he have to resign because he lightly perjured himself before Congress? I don’t know. Should Jeff Sessions resign because he’s a BAD attorney? I think so.

I think it’s reasonable to expect that the Attorney General could get through a freaking deposition without incriminating himself.

Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose [Washington Post]

Earlier: Jeff Sessions Exposes The Soft Bigotry Of Inaction

Ken Starr Fails Deposition 101

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.