Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump Are Tripping Over Their Own Russia Excuses

The Trump/Russia dam of lies is full to bursting. Flynn is gone, Sessions has recused himself, an obvious attempt to fend off the demands he resign, and Trump, as we have pointed out before, like an NFL head coach who has fired all his coordinators, is rapidly running out of people to blame for his own failures.

As just one example of Sessions endless parade of lies since the whole story broke, The Washington Post‘s Greg Miller asked, “How can Sessions say, as just did on Fox, that he ‘has never been told’ Russia backed Trump? Its in a public report!”

Guantanamo prosecutor Col. Morris Davis answered for all of us when he said, “Greg, Greg, Greg … you’re obviously mired in the pre-post-truth world where reality, common sense and facts had relevance.”

As Davis has pointed out, Trump was all about “ditching the presumption of innocence” when it was about the Central Park 5 or Benghazi. When the shoe is on the other foot, there shouldn’t even be questions asked, let alone ditching the presumption of innocence.

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No, there should be no rush to judgment without evidence, but that’s what investigations are for, to determine if there is a need for judgment, and there is clearly need for an investigation. As Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Wednesday,

“What does it say, when you lie about something that you don’t have to lie about?â€

Scarborough, who still likes to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, mused that,

“There is a multiplying effect — when you have your NSA, your national security adviser, lying and having to resign. And then you have your attorney general lying in front of Congress over something he shouldn’t have to lie about because he’s on the armed services committee. He had the right to talk to whomever. Why lie about it? It just compounds all of the questions.â€

And that’s exactly the point. Meanwhile, more Trump advisers are disclosing Russia meetings. It’s getting to be a long parade.

Trump hasn’t helped his own case by repeatedly lying about his relationship with Vladimir Putin, or about his business ties with Russia. Add Michael Flynn and now Jeff Sessions lying under oath, and folks in Congress ought by now to be curious enough to see where it leads.

Sean Spicer claimed Thursday that “He [Sessions] was literally conducting himself as a United States senator.â€

The only problem with that is that as The Wall Street Journal reports, “Records show [the] attorney general used campaign account for travel expenses to Cleveland, where he met Russian envoy” instead of “official funds that would pay for travel by him or other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

“’Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).â€

Just as Sessions was so surprised he not only forgot how to speak it (Trump says he could have answered “more accurately”) but apparently forgot how to understand it as well.

Sessions implied, as his excuse for lying under oath, that he answered honestly based on his “understanding” of the questions asked.

Perhaps at the very least, we need an attorney general representing an avowed nativist regime who has a better understanding of his own language.

Yes. It stretches credulity. Even in these “post-truth” days.

All these details also make the release of Trump’s tax returns more critical than ever. Yet Republicans who were more than willing to investigate Hillary Clinton without any evidence at all want nothing to do with any actual evidence that leads them to Russia.

They want to forget it and move on. And that’s telling too.



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