This Is a Big, Honking Deal Jeff Sessions recu

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This Is a Big, Honking Deal

Jeff Sessions recuses himself while the plot thickens elsewhere.

By Charles P. Pierce

Mar 2, 2017

JeffBo has put one foot in and left one foot out. He will recuse himself from any investigation involving the Trump campaign and the Russians, but, if I understood him correctly in his press conference, he's not going to recuse himself on any investigation involving anything that happened after Election Day last November.

In other words, he will recuse himself from any investigation of any possible quid, but not of any investigation of a possible quo.

But you take what you can get, I guess. From CBS News

"They don't know the rules, the ethics rules, most people don't. But when you evaluate the rules I feel like I am -- I should not get involved investigating a campaign I had a role in."

Despite Sessions' hedging, this is still something of a big, honking deal. The Attorney General of the United States has conflicted himself out of serious investigations of serious wrongdoing.

And, in his press conference, Sessions piled up enough repetitions of everyone's favorite phrase—"I don't recall"—to send anyone's gobbledegook indicator into the red zone.

The issue of whether or not Russia holds the paper on this administration has picked up extraordinary speed in the last few days. (NBC reported this afternoon that the Senate Intelligence Committee may call Christopher Steele, the former British spook who compiled the famous dossier on the president*, to testify.

Steele's been in hiding ever since his dossier hit the fan.) Of course, the president* himself complicated everything by tossing off his unqualified support while he was wandering around a new aircraft carrier.

Sessions announced his recusal shortly thereafter. (Also, Sean Spicer got hung out to dry again.) The fact remains that none of this happens if Sessions doesn't get caught in a barefaced non-fact during his confirmation process.

Jeff Sessions Just Twisted Himself into a Pretzel

In a related story, Jared Kushner, International Man By Marriage, is now a player on this stage. From The New York Times:

Michael T. Flynn, then Donald J. Trump's incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to "establish a line of communication" between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday.

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. But among Mr. Trump's inner circle, it is Mr. Flynn who appears to have been the main interlocutor with the Russian envoy — the two were in contact during the campaign and the transition, Mr. Kislyak and current and former American officials have said.

But the extent and frequency of their contacts remains unclear, and the disclosure of the meeting at Trump Tower adds to the emerging picture of how the relationship between Mr. Trump's incoming team and Moscow was evolving to include some of the president-elect's most trusted advisers.

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