Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he did not disclose (opens in new tab)

This is becoming the next Watergate. Isn't it?

From the NYT article:

----------

On Wednesday, a Justice Department official confirmed that Mr. Sessions had two conversations with Ambassador Kislyak last year, when he was still a senator, despite testifying at his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing that he had no contact with the Russians. At that hearing, Mr. Sessions was asked what he would do if it turned out to be true that anyone affiliated with the Trump team had communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign. He said he was “not aware of any of those activities.”

“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it,” Mr. Sessions said at the time.

His answer to Senator Franken is more damning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BpgHcanjCQ

"I have been called a surrogate at a time or two on that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians. Um. And I'm unable to comment on it."

According to the article it was the written question submitted by Sen. Leahy that limited itself to communications specifically discussing the campaign.

The oral question by Sen. Franken was more open ended, and Sessions response seemed even less ambiguous.

  At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing,
  Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he
  would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone
  affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the
  Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

  “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He
  added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in
  that campaign and I did not have communications with the
  Russians.”

  Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations
  relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in
  detail what he discussed with Kislyak.

I don't think there's any kind of conspiracy involving Russia. But clearly there was a conspiracy among the Russians to effect the campaign. And there _might_ be something of a conspiracy within Trump's camp in the sense that they're intentionally circling the wagons regarding Trump's preferred Russian policy. I wouldn't speculate about the motivations behind Trump's preferences because they're probably numerous and not even necessarily coherent; more like a general coincidence of interests that both Trump and Russia would like to exploit.

There is currently a developing story about how various players intersect in the Ukraine. The short version is the Trump lifts sanctions against Russia, a Ukranian politician named Artemenko leads the charge to oust the current Ukranian president Poroshenko on corruption charges, and Russia keeps Crimea. This was outlined in a document hand-delivered to Michael Flynn, the disgraced/resigned National Security Advisor, by Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal lawyer with massive interests in the Ukraine.

It's an unholy mess and Talking Points Memo seems to be doing the best job of tracking this facet of the ongoing trainwreck.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-...

There's also this fantastic New Yorker story just published that outlines the Russian position generally. Shorter: fucking with the U.S. was worth it to push back against American arrogance and to assert Russian worth on the world stage; didn't expect it to work this well.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and...

> Why did Russia want Trump to win? Did he promise to hand over the Crimea or something?

I was listening to this today [1], and it explained that Russia fully expected Clinton to win, and was just looking to make her presidency chaotic. You know had Hillary won, and news of Russian "hacking" reached Republicans, they would be reacting just as the Democrats are now, calling for investigations and lobbying charges of collusion with the Russians against Clinton. Trump even primed the base to accept that line of attack, calling the election rigged when it looked like he was going to lose (since that's always his reaction when he starts to lose).

That Trump won came as a shock to Putin, and now after a brief honeymoon with Trump, Putin has ordered to dial back praising Trump on national media.

So really, there may be no direct link between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling, but they certainly aren't doing themselves favors by lying about it. I could understand that the optics look bad, given the circumstances, but being caught lying about it looks exponentially worse, especially since sessions previously refused to recuse himself from the investigation into said contacts with Russians!

[1]: https://www.npr.org/player/embed/517994347/517994380

And this is the reason why I finally canceled the WSJ subscription. BTW, just want to applaud to NYTimes and Washington Post for the great job they have been doing under such pressure from Trump.

Finally! Just after decades of support, NYT doesn't like current administration. Real journalism would be NYT asking to revoke Obama's Nobel prize. Did I miss this masterpiece?

The guy who wants to be the country's top lawyer was caught perjuring himself in front of congress. Republicans in congress can't ignore this without significant loss of face with their constituents.

I hear you, but the question is whether HN should become a site that is only about politics. Clearly it should not, and it's our job to make sure that doesn't happen.

HN has had plenty of discussions of the Trump administration. A certain amount is ok—it depends on the story—but the latest news about who may or may not have spoken to an ambassador doesn't come close to the threshold. It's not a borderline call; it's not even in the ball park. If we allow that, we allow everything. In that case politics would certainly take over the site. This story was at #1 before we demoted it!

The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting: gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

> A story of quite significance to our daily lives is not off topic here.

Well, the site guidelines[1] would disagree with you:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Again, If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's off topic for everyone not based in the US. There are more appropriate forums for this discussion.

The problem here is that there is objectively no difference between the two scenarios you laid out (because there is no evidence either way). It is purely a matter of "optics" in both situations (trust or lack thereof), so your interpretation is wholly dependent on what other news about that particular person you've read.

Is speaking to the Russian ambassador somehow illegal? It seems that the accusations here are whether Sessions had contacts with Russia during his time as a Trump campaign surrogate. He did not. So it's not clear to me what the controversy is here.