A White House spokeswoman on Friday downplayed revelations that 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 met with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential campaign, then didn't mention it during his confirmation hearing, by referring to Sessions as a campaign "volunteer."

"Please explain to me how volunteers meeting at a conference where nearly 80 ambassadors attended is a story. I guess it’s kind of lost on me where that would be newsworthy in any capacity," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One as Trump flew into Orlando.

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A Washington Post report Wednesday disclosed Sessions's meeting, which he did not disclose to the Senate Judiciary Committee while under oath when specifically asked about whether Trump campaign officials had met with Russian diplomats.

On Thursday, Sessions recused himself from any Department of Justice investigations of Trump's campaign's ties to Russia.

Democrats have blasted the Trump administration and the preceding presidential campaign for allegations of ties to Russia. And they've seized on the reports of Sessions's meeting and subsequent phone call to accuse him of misleading Congress.

Sessions has long been one of Trump's most ardent supporters and was the first senator to endorse his presidential bid. A handful of Sessions's top staffers became aides to the campaign and later became key players in the administration, including White House policy director Stephen Miller.

The attorney general has sought to downplay the situation by arguing his meetings came in an official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, rather than as a member of the Trump campaign, and that he only did not disclose the talks when asked because they were not related to the campaign.

Huckabee Sanders leaned into that argument, arguing that the stories are an attempt to "muddy the waters" in a way that is "unfair to the attorney general."