Miraculously, Jeff Sessions Can’t Remember Anything Incriminating in Russia Investigation

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, Attorney General of the United States, testified before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, and it seemed pointless for him to be there at all, given that he couldn’t remember much about the matters on which he was supposed to be testifying.

Sessions testified back in October that no member of the Trump campaign had had any contact with Russia. This has been demonstrably proven to be false, and so now the Judiciary Committee had to ascertain whether Sessions did have any knowledge of the contact. To prove his innocence, Sessions resorted to the time-honored tactic of saying he could not recall anything about such contact. The one time Sessions said he did remember something involving Russia, conveniently, was when he shot down a meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin (suggested by campaign aide George Papadopoulos).

The N.Y. Times has a comprehensive list of Sessions’ testimony, including Democrats’ attempts to get to the bottom of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Republicans’ attempts to talk about literally anything else in the world. Among the highlights: Sessions said he believes the victims accusing Roy Moore of sexual abuse, and laughed off a comment he made decades ago about marijuana users being universally bad people.

Republicans also did what Trump has been doing: berate Sessions for not appointing a special counsel for investigations they want to see carried out by the Department of Justice. Chief among those is the Obama-era Uranium One deal, because Republicans are desperate for that to receive the same attention as Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. At least one Democrat present said that the appointment of a new special counsel would only “cater to the President’s political needs.”

But it was on Russia that Democrats focused, as Sessions has already been shown to have given incorrect testimony on that front. Sessions said he never met with any Russian during the campaign. He was totally lying. His earlier testimony revealed that he was either ignorant of most of the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia or deliberately lying about them. He’s choosing ignorance, and has opted to simply say he doesn’t remember the Russian connections.

Democrats weren’t impressed. Here’s The NYT quoting Rep. John Conyers:

Under oath, knowing in advance that he would be asked about this subject, the Attorney General gave answers that were, at best, incomplete. I hope the Attorney General can provide some clarification on this problem in his remarks today.