Jeff Sessions of Alabama. (photo: Hilary Swift/NYT)
The Cloud Over Jeff Sessions' Head Just Got Darker
By Chris Smith, Vanity Fair
10 June 17
The attorney general helped fire Jim Comey. The former F.B.I. director may
be returning the favor.
Inside the jam-packed Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, Jim Comey's
blunt words set off audible squalls of shock: "The president chose to defame
me." Wow, murmured the press. "Those were lies, plain and simple." Uhnnn,
gasped the tiny group of civilians seated in the back of the room.
Comey's words, and those of the 17 senators questioning him, gushed out for
three and a half hours Thursday morning. There were discussions of an
awkward White House dinner, Russian cyber-mischief, and Thomas Becket. Yet
the most significant moments were about words that couldn't be said
publicly, and things that weren't done-and both turned the heat of the
investigation directly onto Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Sessions has been tangled up in this mess since nearly its beginning. While
serving as a prominent Trump campaign surrogate, Sessions met twice with
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak-meetings he failed to disclose on a
security clearance form when Trump nominated Sessions to become A.G., later
explaining it as a benign oversight. Still, that failure eventually forced
Sessions to recuse himself from the Justice Department's investigation of
possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. (Just how
recused Sessions really is came into question in May, however, when he wrote
a letter recommending Comey's firing.)
Even so, Sessions had cannily managed to stay on the periphery of the
scandal-until yesterday. Comey was quizzed by California Senator Kamala
Harris, who is becoming the breakout Democratic star of the intelligence
committee's hearings. Harris wanted to know more about the conversation in
which Comey pleaded with Sessions to keep Trump from interfering with the
F.B.I. "You write [in Comey's prepared statement] that he did not reply,"
Harris said, in the deceptively casual tone that made her a
highly-successful prosecutor in San Francisco. "What did he do, if anything?
Did he just look at you? Was there a pause for a moment?"
"His body language gave me the sense, like, 'What am I going to do?'" Comey
said, adding a slight shrug in imitation of Sesssion's non-reaction
reaction. "He didn't say anything."
That was bad enough-that Sessions left Comey twisting in the bureaucratic
wind, a unprotected target of Trump's continuing wheedling. But Comey,
responding to a question from Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, also teased a
potentially damning new revelation: "We were aware of facts that I can't
discuss in an open setting that would make [Session's] continued engagement
in a Russia-related investigation problematic." Several hours later, NBC
broke the news that Comey told the intelligence committee members, in a
private session, that Sessions may have had a third undisclosed meeting with
Kislyak.
Reporters had been chasing leads about a possible third Sessions-Kislyak
meeting for weeks; Comey's description of it seems not to have been
definitive. Nevertheless, he has finally made Sessions a central figure in
the drama.
As he should have been all along. It's difficult, for instance, to picture
Rod Rosenstein, who had been on the job as deputy attorney general two
weeks, concocting a memo justifying Comey's firing without Sessions'
guidance. And while Trump can (almost) plausibly plead ignorance when it
comes to the time-honored separation between the White House and the
Department of Justice, Sessions certainly can't: he was a federal prosecutor
for 12 years, Alabama's attorney general for two, and the ranking Republican
on the Senate Judiciary Committee. (And the truth is stupidity has only
partly driven Trump actions-it's also that he thinks the F.B.I. should be
his personal "lock her up" police force.) Yet Sessions allowed Trump to shoo
him out of the Oval Office so the president could press Comey one-on-one to
drop the investigation of fired national security advisor Mike Flynn.
"Sessions is the godfather of the Trump ideology," a Senate insider says. "I
think he and Trump are covering up for a reason, and it's a reason worse
than the coverup itself."
Precisely. Maybe there is no single smoking Kalashnikov. Yet throughout this
strange affair the president and the attorney general have behaved as if
they have something serious to hide. "The Comey testimony confirmed a lot of
things that had been reported in the media, and that investigators knew," a
Senate intelligence committee source says. "But it also raised a lot more
questions."
Many of which will now be aimed at Sessions. The House and Senate
intelligence committees will soon invite Sessions to testify. Robert
Mueller, the special counsel now overseeing the D.O.J.'s investigation, will
probably interrogate the attorney general first, though.
"Mueller will want to know, Why didn't Sessions do more when Comey warned
him about Trump's inappropriate behavior?" says Matthew Miller, who was
D.O.J. spokesman for attorney general Eric Holder. "Why did Sessions sign
off on Comey's firing despite knowing about the warning that Trump was
trying to meddle with Comey? And Mueller can't ignore looking at whether
Sessions intentionally concealed his meetings with Kislyak."
As Comey walked out of the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing room, he
did not look relieved-he looked exhausted, pale, almost waxen. But he had
succeeded in shifting one burden: When Comey was F.B.I. director, Trump had
insisted he make the Russia "cloud" go away. Instead, the darkness is now
hovering ominously over the head of Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
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