Senate Democrats say Sessions needs to testify again on Russia

By Jonathan Landay and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Democrats on Thursday demanded that Attorney General Jeff Sessions be recalled to testify on the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts following the disclosure of an effort to set up a meeting for then-Republican candidate Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Judiciary Committee Democrats want to question Sessions, who served as the Trump campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser, about his denials of knowing anything about contacts between the campaign and Russians.

Sessions “needs to come back before the committee, in person, under oath, to explain why he cannot seem to provide truthful, complete answers,” Senator Patrick Leahy, the panel’s senior Democrat, said in a statement.

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A spokesman for another committee Democrat, Al Franken, told Reuters that Franken “would totally agree with that request. Attorney General Sessions should explain himself about the multiple things he said in committee that seem to contradict themselves.”

Franken sent a letter to Sessions on Thursday accusing the attorney general of failing to tell the truth about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians.

“This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth under oath,” Franken wrote in the eight-page letter demanding answers to more than 30 questions.

Sessions testified about Russian contacts before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October and the Senate Intelligence Committee in June.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman)