Armed Services Committee Dem pokes at Sessions: We don’t meet with ambassadors
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Thursday sought to refute Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s claim that his contact with Russia was because he was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sessions, a former Republican senator, spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential campaign, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
A Sessions spokesman insisted that the contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee, not as a surrogate for Trump’s presidential campaign.
But McCaskill, also a member of the committee, tweeted that she has never had contact with the ambassador in her capacity on the Armed Services Committee.
I’ve been on the Armed Services Com for 10 years.No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever. Ambassadors call members of Foreign Rel Com.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) March 2, 2017
{mosads}Following McCaskill’s tweet, previous posts resurfaced about her citing meeting with the Russian ambassador.
Off to meeting w/Russian Ambassador. Upset about the arbitrary/cruel decision to end all US adoptions,even those in process.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) January 30, 2013
The senator’s spokeswoman said in a statement that the meeting included other senators and noted the contrast with Sessions’ communications.
“She did attend a group meeting about adoptions with other Senators, and had a brief proactive call with the ambassador amid calls to several other parties to the Iran nuclear deal,” the statement reads. “Attorney General Sessions, on the other hand, misled the Senate under oath.”In its report, The Washington Post noted that it called all 26 members of the Senate committee to confirm whether any other member had met with Kislyak.
The 20 senators who responded said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year. The report did not indicate whether McCaskill was one of the respondents.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on Sessions to immediately resign following the Post’s report.
“Jeff Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearing before the Senate. Under penalty of perjury, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, ‘I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.’ We now know that statement is false,” Pelosi said in a statement late Wednesday.
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