On Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before the House Judiciary Committee during a public, televised meeting concerning Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. Considering the former Alabama senator’s previous run-ins with the Senate during similarly-themed testimonies, as well as his proclivity for “forgetting” pertinent details from the Trump campaign, Tuesday’s event was shaping up to be another notch in the attorney general’s poorly-fitted belt. And sure enough, he began wrapping up his opening remarks with a series of diatribes regarding his prior testimony:
“I would like to address the false charges made about my previous testimony. My answers have not changed. I’ve always told the truth. I have answered every question as I have understood them, to be best of my recollection, as I will continue to do today.”
Sessions then launched into a series of comments about former Trump campaign officials George Papadopoulos, who has figured prominently in the numerous Congressional and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigations into alleged collusion with Russia:
“Frankly, I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports. I do now recall the March 2016 meeting at the Trump hotel that Mr. Papadopoulos attended, but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he said at that meeting. After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government or any other government for that matter. But I did not recall this even which occurred 18 months before my testimony of a few weeks ago. I would gladly have reported it had I remembered it because I pushed back against his suggestion, which I thought may have been improper.”
Sessions also mentioned Carter Page, another former Trump campaign official who has since become a favorite guest of many cable news talk shows. Like Papadopoulos before him, the attorney general said he had no recollection of pertinent instances from Page’s testimony, but he did not challenge the account. Despite giving a concluding statement in which he insisted his previous answers had not changed, however, Sessions did correct several misstatements or previous instances of “I do not recall” in the above testimony. He also took the opportunity to praise the president’s “brilliant campaign.”