The Obama administration helped set up the first meeting Jeff Sessions had with the Russian ambassador in 2016.

Heritage Foundation scholar Hans von Spakovsky wrote at FoxNews.com that the event at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that his employer hosted was attended by Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Spakovsky writes that the event was a conference titled “Global Partners in Diplomacy,” where Sessions was the keynote speaker. It was sponsored by the State Department, the Heritage Foundation and other organizations.

“The conference was an educational program for ambassadors invited by the Obama State Department to observe the convention. The Obama State Department handled all of the coordination with ambassadors and their staff, of which there were about 100 at the conference,” Spakovsky writes.

He goes on to say, “Apparently, after Sessions finished speaking, a small group of ambassadors—including the Russian ambassador—approached the senator as he left the stage and thanked him for his remarks. That’s the first ‘meeting.’ And it’s hardly an occasion—much less a venue—in when a conspiracy to ‘interfere’ with the November election could be hatched.”

The second meeting took place last September in Sessions’ office in the former senator’s capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not as a surrogate for the Trump campaign, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said.

According to Isgur Flores, the two men discussed relations between the two countries – not the election.

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