Sen. Claire McCaskill defended her comments by later noting she had never had a one-on-one meeting with Sergei Kislyak, Moscow's ambassador to the U.S. | AP Photo McCaskill defends meeting Russian envoy amid Twitter flap

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Thursday drew jeers from Republicans after claiming she had never met with the Russian ambassador while calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign — despite evidence of two prior encounters with the controversial envoy.

McCaskill, up for reelection next year and one of the GOP's top targets, first tweeted that she had not met with or had a call with Sergei Kislyak, Moscow's ambassador to the U.S., despite serving 10 years on the Armed Services committee. Her claim was designed to underscore what many Democrats view as the impropriety of Sessions' one-on-one meeting with Kislyak last year, which the Trump administration claims was a routine part of his service on the armed services panel.


But Republican operatives quickly blasted McCaskill as misrepresenting her record, citing the Democrat's tweets about a 2013 group meeting with Kislyak and a 2015 call with the ambassador to discuss the nuclear pact with Iran.

"Just like Hillary Clinton, Senator McCaskill has a major problem with the truth," Scott Sloofman, spokesman for the conservative America Rising PAC, said in a statement. "In her rush to stand with Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren to score political points, McCaskill exposed herself as both a liar and a hypocrite."

McCaskill defended her comments by later noting she had never had a one-on-one meeting with Kislyak, unlike Sessions. She also said Republicans were seizing on a close reading of her tweets to distract from the political trouble they face over the attorney general's apparent misrepresentation of his interactions with Kislyak during his confirmation hearing.

"The Russian ambassador never called me. The Russian ambassador has never asked for a meeting with me," McCaskill told reporters, adding later that "you cannot say that having a one-on-one meeting with the Russian ambassador was a common thing to occur."

McCaskill said a fellow Democrat on the armed services panel told her that he "would never dream of meeting with the Russian ambassador without the State Department there because we know they spy on us."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday dismissed attempts to cast McCaskill's meetings and Sessions' meetings as equivalent, telling reporters that "there's nothing wrong with meeting with the Russian ambassador" under the Missourian's circumstances. The issue Sessions faces, Schumer added, stems from a failure to correct the record during his confirmation hearing, when he denied meeting with Russian officials.

