Politics

Top Senate Dems Quick To Hit Sessions, But When Asked, Still Can’t Say If He Actually Lied [VIDEO]

Ian Mason Contributor
Font Size:

Several Senate Democrats — while quick to attack Attorney General Jeff Sessions for failing to disclose meetings with Russian officials — still won’t say if he actually lied about the aforementioned meetings.

Since it was revealed that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador twice during the 2016 campaign, Democrats — including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — have accused the attorney general of lying and perjuring himself in his response to Senator Al Franken’s inquiry about his contacts with “Russians” during his confirmation hearing last month.

Pelosi’s accusations were not, however, echoed by her Senate co-partisans, who carefully tipped-toed around calling their former Senate colleague a liar.

WATCH:


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for example, dodged a direct question on whether Sessions had purgered himself saying, “OK, I am not a legal expert on perjury and I’d leave that to the experts.”

WATCH:

Patrick Leahy, the longest serving Democrat in the Senate, was no more eager to accuse Sessions. CNN host Poppy Harlow asked the Senate Judiciary Committee member, “Do you believe the Attorney General lied to your committee?”

Leahy was non-committal. “I don’t think Senator Sessions gave an accurate answer,” he said. Asked a second and then a third time if Sessions had lied, Leahy again refused to make the assertion. “The answer is not true. We’ll let others make that determination. I was a prosecutor. I would not have accepted that answer.”

WATCH:

Senator Franken himself was equally equivocal on whether he felt lied to by Session. “Do you think Sessions lied to you?” CNN’s Chris Cuomo directly asked. “I would say that at the very least this was extremely misleading…I am going to be sending him a letter,” was the response.

Franken emphasized that Sessions himself had volunteered the response that has landed him in hot water. “He needs to explain himself here…I just asked a question. And he was the one who offered this.”