MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS: I mean, it's ironic because, you know, a lot of Democrats say, well, obviously, the president had decided he was going to fire the FBI director no matter what. So, I'm not sure why there is so much concern about, you know, Sessions' role in it given the fact that the argument made from your side has been that the president had decided that long ago on his own.



But I do want to get through a couple of things here. This is Senator Tom Cotton, and I want to play this for you and get your thoughts on it.



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR), SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: What do we think happened at the Mayflower? Do you like spy fiction? Have you ever in any of these fantastical situations heard of a plot line so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and the ambassador of a foreign government colluded in an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history of espionage?



(END VIDEO CLIP)



MACCALLUM: Senator Coons, what do you make of that?



SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Well, Senator Cotton certainly put that question well. I would say part of why these questions have come over and over to representatives of the Trump administration is because there were a series of episodes that were not appropriately initially disclosed, say, for example, the extent to which former national security advisor Mike Flynn represented foreign interest and failed to report them or the extent to which Jared Kushner had meetings with Russian leaders early and explored a backchannel in a way that was designed to avoid knowledge or oversight.



MACCALLUM: But for the purposes of this hearing, which is what we were watching today, the question that was dangled by James Comey was, you know, well, there is a third meeting here, and we really can't talk about it in this open session. But -- and also he said, you know, I knew that Senator Sessions would recuse himself for reasons I can't really go into here. So, he dangled a lot about specifically about Attorney General Jeff Sessions.



COONS: That's right.



MACCALLUM: And that I think is what Tom Cotton was getting at. I mean, the preposterousness of, you know, Kislyak and Sessions meeting at this big hotel in front of all these people and doing something nefarious does strike you, when you look at it that way, as kind of silly, does it not?



COONS: If that were the only contact that where a subject of concern between folks in the Trump campaign and Russians, then it would seem absurd. But the point I was just making is that it's not. There was a wide range of contacts that really haven't been fully accounted for, that's why we've got a special counselor, Bob Mueller now looking into this. And I was encouraged that on a bipartisan basis, we heard calls from Republicans and Democrats today for Bob Mueller to have the resources and the independence he needs to carry that investigation forward.

