Here’s where we are, 10 months into the Trump administration: if the attorney general of the United States is grilled about the likelihood that he has perjured himself, but not about his views on pedophilia, he will consider himself lucky.

On Tuesday, Jeff Sessions will testify before the House Judiciary Committee—one of the few Congressional bodies not conducting its very own Russia investigation, because its chairman, Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte, has refused to allow such a probe. But thanks to a quirk of timing, Sessions will travel to Capitol Hill for one of his regularly scheduled appearances before the committee, which has oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice. It will be the first time that Sessions has spoken publicly since news of the plea deal by George Papadopoulos and the testimony by Carter Page, who have contradicted Sessions’s sworn statement that he was unaware of any Trump campaign contacts with Russian operatives. It will also be the first time that Sessions has made himself available for questioning since the Republican candidate to replace him in the U.S. Senate, Roy Moore, was accused of stripping down to his underwear with a 14-year-old Alabama girl.

So Sessions is in for an interesting morning. He has dug this hole himself, beginning in January, during his confirmation hearings, when he said he was “not aware” of any Trump campaign communications with the Russian government, and that he himself did not communicate with the Russians. That account has evolved to include Sessions acknowledging three chats with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and “possible” discussions about Trump’s policy positions toward Russia. The hole has grown considerably deeper in the past two weeks, first when special counsel Robert Mueller unveiled a guilty plea from Papadopoulos, a member of the campaign foreign policy and national security team headed by Sessions. In a March 31, 2016, meeting of the group, Papadopoulos apparently advocated a meeting between candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin—a proposal that Sessions is said to have shut down. “Fine,” says Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat and a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “But Sessions doesn’t remember the conversation? That strains credulity.”

Ted Lieu is nowhere near as diplomatic. “We know from recent reporting that Jeff Sessions lied under oath when he said he was not aware of any campaign official having contact with Russia, because Papadopoulos clearly did, and he apparently reported to Jeff Sessions,” the California Democrat says. “On Tuesday, I’d like to understand more about what that relationship was, between Sessions and Papadopoulos. I’d also like to know if Carter Page reported to Jeff Sessions.”

Last week the bizarrely gabby Page appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and detailed his work for the Trump campaign and his 2016 journey to Moscow, where he met with a deputy prime minister. “Carter Page testified he told Sessions, during the campaign, that he was going to Russia—and that he wasn’t waved off,” says Representative Eric Swalwell, who was one of Page’s questioners and who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, so will get a crack at Sessions. “Page wasn’t told, ‘That’s a bad idea.’ And that conversation was never acknowledged or disclosed by Sessions. There’s also a line of inquiry about what was Trump’s state of mind about Russia during the campaign, particularly from Sessions, who was leading his foreign policy team.”

Expect the Democrats to push hard on at least two other issues: why Sessions hasn’t publicly defended the D.O.J. in the wake of Trump’s recent tweets attacking the department’s integrity, and how Sessions plans to preserve the documents and evidence that Mueller has collected in the event that Trump fires the special counsel. Interestingly, though, the main line of attack is still under discussion. Democrats are debating just how far to push to try to prove Sessions has lied. “The Catch-22 is, O.K., you catch him on perjury,” one Congressperson says. “On the other hand, you don’t want him to have to resign, because then Trump can put in somebody else as attorney general who is not recused from the Russia investigation, and who might then fire Mueller.”

Calibrating a pursuit of the truth with the protection of the special counsel could prove a tricky balancing act. Yet Nadler, for one, is keeping his focus on the larger context and not on interim tactical choices. “There’s a clear pattern: whether you look at Jared Kushner, or you look at Donald Trump Jr., or you look at Sessions,” he says. “One, ‘I never met a Russian.’ Two, ‘Well, maybe I did.’ Three, ‘I never talked to anybody about the campaign. Well, actually, I did—but it was only a man in the street.’ Actually, it was military intelligence. The question isn’t collusion. There obviously was collusion. The question is criminal conspiracy, and what did Trump personally know about it?”

With all of that important ground to cover, perhaps the attorney general can run out the clock before anyone asks his views on the dating habits of his would-be U.S. Senate successor, Moore. “Oh, yes, those questions will absolutely be asked,” Lieu says. “Keep in mind, Jeff Sessions is the nation’s top law enforcement official. Law enforcement, obviously, goes after child molesters. It would be good to know what he thinks of Roy Moore.”