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During his testimony, Comey described a series of one-on-one meetings he had with President Trump that he said left him “stunned.” The circumstances of speaking alone to the president, combined with the fact that they were discussing an investigation involving the Trump campaign, and the president’s character led Comey to take copious notes on the meetings and raise red flags to top officials at the Justice Department.
Comey told the intelligence panel that after his second private meeting with Trump, he explained to members of the president’s team and his own superiors at the Justice Department that it was not appropriate for him to meet alone with the president.
Following one particularly troubling meeting with the president on February 14, Comey directly addressed Sessions to “implore” the attorney general to “prevent any future direct communication” between himself and President Trump.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters on Thursday that he has serious questions about his former colleague Jeff Sessions because of his role in Comey’s firing and his failure to protect the FBI from “political interference.” Blumenthal wants Sessions to appear before the Judiciary Committee to answer his and other members’ lingering concerns.
“If [Sessions] were doing his job, he would have taken immediate steps to protect the FBI and its director from this attempted political interference,” Blumenthal said of the repeated one-on-one meetings Trump requested with Comey.
The failure of both Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to stop these one-on-one meetings and their role in drafting the memos that were originally used to justify Comey’s firing raise questions of “obstruction of justice,” by members of the Trump administration, Blumenthal said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently conducting its own investigation of Russian election interference, which has been expanded to include the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing. In May, Trump reportedly told Russian officials in the Oval Office that he fired Comey to relieve the “great pressure” he felt as a result of the Russia probe.
Sessions’ overt role in the FBI and congressional investigations into possible collusion between the Russian government and Trump team during the 2016 elections was greatly diminished when he recused himself from any involvement in the case in early March. But Democratic senators are not convinced that he fully cut himself off from the Russia probe.
During the hearing with Comey, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) pressed the former FBI director on whether he believes Sessions had effectively separated himself from all matters related to the Russia investigation.
Asking if he could “characterize Attorney General Sessions’s adherence to his recusal … in particular, with regard to his involvement in your firing,” Comey acknowledged the question was reasonable, but he could not answer.
Republicans are also interested to hear Sessions’ side of the story.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters after the hearing that Sessions should appear before the Intelligence Committee to “hopefully answer some questions on a number of topics.”
Top Republican and member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, John Cornyn of Texas, noted that the “there has been some contact with the attorney general” through the Intelligence Committee, but he is not aware of any request for him to testify. .
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) described the environment around the Trump administration and the Russia investigation as “a full-fledged scandal.” But Sessions’ role in it is not yet clear, he suggested, saying that the attorney general should address the Senate depending on where the investigation lead. “Everybody should testify who has something to do with it.”
Over the past week, there was speculation about a possible falling out between Trump and Sessions over his handling of the Russia case. Those rumors were exacerbated on Tuesday when White House press secretary Sean Spicer was unable to confirm whether or not the president still had confidence in his attorney general.
On Thursday the White House broke a two-day silence to affirm that Trump “absolutely” has confidence in Sessions.
