Sessions recuses himself from Trump-Russia probe The attorney general is removing himself following reports he met twice with the Russian ambassador during Trump's campaign.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday that he will recuse himself from any investigations related to campaigns for president, including any probe into contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.

“I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign,” Sessions told reporters Thursday at a news conference at the Justice Department.


Sessions, who maintained support from Trump himself, said he consulted senior Justice Department staff for their “candid and honest opinion about what I should do.”

“My staff recommended recusal,” he said. “They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation. I have studied the rules and considered their comments and evaluation. I believe those recommendations are right and just.”

In a statement following his remarks, Sessions noted that his recusal goes for “any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaign for president of the United States.”

He added, however, “This announcement should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation or suggestive of the scope of any such investigation.”

A growing number of Republicans had called on Sessions to recuse himself — and Democratic leaders had insisted he resign altogether — after reports emerged Wednesday that Sessions had met twice with the Russian ambassador last year despite testifying during his confirmation hearing that he had no communications with Russians during the campaign, amplifying the Trump administration’s Russia problem.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Thursday evening, Sessions said that in the coming days he plans to to file a supplement to the Senate record to clarify that he did meet with the Russian ambassador.

“I will definitely make that a part of the record,” he said.

While talking with Carlson, he said he didn’t recall much specific about his conversation with the ambassador, apart from a disagreement about Ukraine policy. He said they didn’t discuss the presidential campaign in a “meaningful way.”

Trump himself offered his support via a statement released later on Thursday night, saying the attorney general "did not say anything wrong."

"He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional," Trump continued, before blasting Democrats for "overplaying their hand," and decrying the "illegal leaks of classified and other information."

Sessions insisted Thursday that his statements at the hearing were “honest and correct” because his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were not related to the campaign but to official matters related to his service as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The attorney general, however, who was until three weeks ago a U.S. senator from Alabama, said he could not rule out the possibility the campaign came up when the Russian diplomat visited Sessions' Capitol Hill office in September.

“I don’t recall,” Sessions told reporters. “Most of these ambassadors are pretty gossipy and this was in the campaign season, but I don’t recall any specific political discussions.”

Sessions said his memories of the discussion were somewhat vague, although he suggested there was little chance of skullduggery because of the presence of two staffers from his office at the meeting. The pair are retired Army colonels, he noted.

Sessions said he remembered Kislyak being “pretty much of an old-style Soviet-type ambassador” and denying any Russian wrongdoing in Ukraine. The exchange, he said, grew somewhat tense after Kislyak blamed the unrest in Ukraine on “everyone else.”

“It got to be a little bit of a testy conversation at that point,” Sessions said.

Sessions said he was preparing to send the Senate Judiciary Committee a letter clarifying his answers on Russia. He also said he regretted not mentioning the meetings. “In retrospect, I should have slowed down and said, ‘But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times,’” the attorney general added.

After riding high on Trump’s well-received first address to Congress on Tuesday, the White House found itself mired once again in the scandal over whether Trump campaign officials had frequent contact with Russian officials last year, as officials from President Barack Obama’s administration were looking into allegations that the Russian government was engaging in cyberattacks to try to tilt the election Trump’s way.

Calls for Sessions to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into ties between Trump and Russia had snowballed, following a Washington Post report Wednesday night exposing multiple meetings between Sessions and Kislyak during the campaign. Those meetings, one of which occurred during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, came amid an alleged effort by Russia to aid Trump’s campaign, for which Sessions was a prominent surrogate.

During a Thursday afternoon tour of an aircraft carrier in Newport News, Virginia, Trump responded to a reporter's shouted question, saying that he had “total” confidence in Sessions. Asked if he knew about Sessions’ conversations with the Russian ambassador, Trump said, “I wasn't aware,” and asked if Sessions should recuse himself, the president responded, “I don’t think so.”

Sessions did not disclose his meetings with the ambassador when asked about connections between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign during his confirmation hearings. In fact, he told Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) that “I did not have communications with the Russians.” In a set of written answers for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sessions said he had not been in contact with Russian officials regarding the 2016 campaign.

Aboard the aircraft carrier, Trump said Sessions “probably did” tell the truth in his testimony to Franken and Leahy.

“This is the latest attack against the Trump administration by partisan Democrats. [Attorney] General Sessions met with the ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is entirely consistent with his testimony,” a White House official said. “It’s no surprise Sen. Al Franken is pushing this story immediately following President Trump's successful address to the nation.”

In an interview with Fox News, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Sessions “did his job” and had been “100 percent straight” with the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings. He said Democrats were guilty of “continuing to push a false narrative for political purposes.”

“Look, there’s nothing to recuse himself [from],” Spicer added. “He was 100 percent straight with the committee, and I think that people who are choosing to play partisan politics with this should be ashamed of themselves.”

When Sessions was asked why he recused himself despite Trump and Spicer saying he should not, the attorney general said they were not familiar with the ethics standards involved.

“I feel like they don’t know the rules, the ethics rules. Most people don’t,” he said. “But when you evaluate the rules, I feel like ... I should not be involved investigating a campaign I had a role in.”

A spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry, speaking to CNN on Thursday morning, said Kislyak is a “world-class diplomat” who has “communicated with his American colleagues through decades on different fields.” She said CNN had accused Kislyak of being a Russian spy and warned the network to “stop spreading lie[s] and false news” as she walked away from her interviewer.

In a brief exchange Thursday morning with a reporter from NBC News, Sessions himself had said he would recuse himself “whenever it’s appropriate” but denied that he had discussed the campaign with Russian officials. “I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss any political campaign, and those remarks are unbelievable to me and are false,” he said.

But a senior national security official from the Obama administration said ties between Trump and Russia were a source of grave concern for the outgoing administration in its final days. The official said he had no specific information that Sessions was among those interfacing with the Kremlin on behalf of the incoming administration, but he said former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign over misstatements to Vice President Mike Pence and others about conversations with the Russian ambassador, was not acting alone.

“It seems pretty clear that [Flynn] was not a rogue here,” the senior official said. “I don’t believe that Flynn was the only person promising things to the Russians, communicating to them what would happen once the Trump administration came in.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, on Thursday called for Sessions to step down, saying the senator had not met "his own rigorous standard" for "complete and truthful testimony."

Schiff complained earlier Thursday following a briefing by FBI Director James Comey that the bureau was withholding information regarding its probe into the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in last year’s election.

“I would say at this point we know less than a fraction of what the FBI knows,” Schiff told reporters following the briefing. “I appreciate we had a long briefing and testimony from the director today, but in order for us to do our investigation in a thorough and credible way, we're gonna need the FBI to fully cooperate, to be willing to tell us the length and breadth of any counterintelligence investigations they are conducting.”

As the furor over Sessions grew, about 150 people gathered outside the Justice Department to demanded that he step down.

“Lock him up! Perjury is a crime. Sessions resign!” protesters chanted. Those turning out to call for Sessions’ exit heard from several Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Nydia Velazquez, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Sheila Jackson Lee.

The demonstrators cheered as Lee said, incorrectly, that House Speaker Paul Ryan had just called on Sessions to recuse himself from the probe into alleged Russian tampering with the U.S. election.

“Not enough,” Lee declared. “We will be sending a letter to president Trump asking him to seek the resignation of his attorney general or fire him right on the spot.”

Even after Sessions announced his recusal, it wasn’t enough for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who accused him of perjury while calling for his resignation.

His “narrow recusal and his sorry attempt to explain away his perjury are totally inadequate,” she said a statement. “Attorney General Sessions’ lies to the Senate and to the American people make him unfit to serve as the chief law enforcement officer of our country. He must resign immediately.”

Republicans, in contrast, scoffed at the idea of a resignation. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had recommended recusal to Sessions earlier Thursday.

“First and foremost, any talk of resignation is nonsense,” Grassley said in a statement. “There’s little doubt that alleged conflicts, no matter how flimsy and regardless of whether or not they are based in fact, will be used against him to discredit him and any potential investigation into alleged conversations between the campaign and the Russian government. So, his actions today were the right thing to do.”

At a press conference Thursday morning, Ryan had said Sessions need not recuse himself unless he becomes the subject of an investigation, at which point the attorney general would “of course” step aside. The speaker said he had seen no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government officials during the 2016 campaign.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter Thursday to Comey, the FBI director, and U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips, seeking a criminal investigation into Sessions. The letter, signed by every Democrat on the panel, suggested Sessions may have been in violation of perjury and lying to Congress laws and asked the FBI for a briefing on its investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia.

The Democrats said Sessions’ rationales for meeting Kislyak “appear to be disingenuous at best as the questions put to him did not in any way ask if the meeting was campaign related.”

“This is obviously a very serious matter,” they wrote.

Henry C. Jackson contributed to this story.

Sessions under fire over Russia meetings