Attorney General Jeff Sessions, testifying before the Senate intelligence committee on June 13, 2017, denied involvement with Russian politicians or officials. He called such allegations “an appalling, detestable lie.”
The Washington Post reports that the Russian ambassador to the U.S. has said he discussed election-related issues with Sen. Jeff Sessions when the two men met during the 2016 presidential race.
The Post is citing anonymous U.S. officials who described U.S. intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's descriptions of his meetings with Sessions.
Sessions was then a foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump. The former Alabama senator now serves as the Trump administration's attorney general.
Sessions failed to disclose the meetings with Kislyak during his confirmation hearing. He later said he did not recall discussing the Trump campaign with Kislyak.
Trump called it a "new INTELLIGENCE LEAK [sic] from the Amazon Washington Post" in a tweet early Saturday morning.
He went on to call for an end to "these illegal leaks, like Comey's," referencing former FBI director James Comey, who admitted to sharing information with the press.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores says Sessions stands by his previous assertion that he never had conversations with Russian officials about any type of interference with the election.
