Democratic Senators like Patrick Leahy (left) and Al Franken are now scrutinizing statements by Jeff Sessions that he didn't know of any Trump campaign surrogates who communicated with individuals connected to the Russian government. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Senate Democrats want to grill Sessions again after Papadopoulos plea deal Sessions has not addressed the plea agreement since it was made public on Monday.

Senate Democrats said Thursday they want to again grill Attorney General Jeff Sessions after new twists in the federal probe of alleged Russian ties to President Donald Trump's campaign, but a person familiar with his interactions said the former Republican senator didn't know the extent of ex-campaign adviser George Papadopoulos' conversations with Kremlin-linked individuals.

Sessions faces mounting calls to clarify his testimony before the Senate since the unveiling Monday of Papadopoulas' plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 election.


Democrats are now scrutinizing the attorney general's repeated statements that he didn't know of any Trump campaign surrogates who communicated with individuals connected to the Russian government. The court documents made public on Monday revealed that Papadopoulos, a member of the campaign's national security advisory group, raised the prospect of a confab between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a March 2016 advisory group meeting that Sessions reportedly attended.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called on Sessions to return to the Senate Judiciary Committee for testimony "under oath, to explain why he cannot seem to provide truthful, complete answers to these important and relevant questions" regarding the Trump campaign's interactions with Russia. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) issued his own request for Sessions' return, noting that Papadopoulos had told "his superiors in the campaign" about his interactions with the Russians.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), a Judiciary panel member who challenged Sessions on the Trump camp's Russia ties in January and again last month, fired off an eight-page letter to the attorney general on Thursday raising new questions and warning that he fears "the Senate — and the American public — cannot trust your word."

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Sessions has not addressed the plea agreement since it was made public on Monday. But on Thursday, the person familiar with Sessions' interactions with Papadopoulos, who declined to be named, sought to clarify the attorney general's memories of the events.

Regarding the March 2016 meeting, which Trump also attended, the person said: "It seems clear that the people who remember the conversation believed that Papadopoulos was proposing a prospective idea of using his 'Russian contacts' to try to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, which was immediately rejected by then-Senator Sessions."

Sessions "was unaware of any surrogates from the campaign communicating with the Russians," the source said. "Not only did he not know of any such activities, but when even the idea of such a future meeting surfaced, he personally rejected it."

Although Papadopoulos reportedly sat to Sessions' left at a subsequent dinner, according to The Washington Post, the source said Sessions didn't remember any further interactions.

Some of the Trump campaign aides with whom Papadopoulos communicated about Russia have been identified, including Sam Clovis, who was described in the court filings by Mueller's team as a "campaign supervisor." Others, including a "senior policy adviser" to the campaign whom Papadopoulos emailed about his Russia contacts in April 2016, have not yet been named publicly.

Any attempts at clarification that don't come from Sessions in person are unlikely to quiet Democratic fury over the carefully parsed phrasing of the attorney general's previous statements before the Senate.

"The Attorney General was already given an opportunity to correct his earlier misleading answers to me and Senator Franken in January through written, supplemental testimony," Leahy said in a statement Thursday. "Yet he only continued to mislead."

