Al Franken says he believes Jeff Sessions committed perjury


Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) says Attorney General Jeff Sessions' letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee is "a ridiculous response" to accusations that he misled senators in his sworn testimony during his January confirmation hearing.
Franken had asked Sessions what he would do if he found out that Donald Trump's campaign was communicating with Russian officials, and Sessions offered up that he was "called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign" and "did not have communications with the Russians." It later came out that during the campaign, when he was a senator and foreign policy adviser to Trump, Sessions met twice with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. "It's hard to come to any other conclusion than he just perjured himself," Franken told CNN Tuesday.
In his letter sent Monday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions said his testimony was "correct" and he did not mislead the senators because he was never specifically asked about meetings with the ambassador. Franken told CNN he waited until he read the letter from Sessions to publicly accuse him of not telling the truth, adding that he thinks Sessions should come before the Senate Judiciary Committee again to explain himself.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.