U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face questions on Tuesday about his dealings
with Russian officials and whether he intentionally misled Congress as a Senate
panel
investigates the Kremlin's alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
Sessions'
testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, scheduled to start at 2:30
p.m. (1830 GMT), has the potential for high drama as the Russia probe continues
to dominate U.S. politics, sidelining President Donald Trump's domestic agenda.
The former
Republican U.S. senator from Alabama, one of Trump's most avid supporters on
the campaign trail, will likely have to explain why he told lawmakers in
January he had no dealings with Kremlin officials last year.
His staffers
have since acknowledged that he met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergei
Kislyak. They say he did not mislead Congress because the encounters were part
of his job as a senator, not as a surrogate of the Trump campaign.
But the
revelations forced Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation in
March, and it is now being handled by a special counsel.
Sessions
will likely be asked whether he played a role in Trump's surprise decision to
fire FBI Director James Comey last month - a move that caused Trump's critics
to charge that he was trying to interfere with a criminal investigation.
The attorney
general could also face questions about whether he met Kislyak on a third
occasion. Several media outlets have reported that Comey told the Intelligence
Committee last week that the FBI was examining whether Sessions met with
Kislyak at a Washington hotel last year.
It is not
clear whether Sessions plans to answer all the questions or if he will invoke
executive privilege to avoid disclosing private conversations with the
president.
Some members
of the Intelligence Committee, frustrated by the tight-lipped performance of
other administration officials last week, said they were not going to allow
Sessions to follow suit.
"That's
just not going to be acceptable," said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat on
the committee.
One of those
administration officials, Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the National Security
Agency, met with members of the Intelligence Committee in a closed-door
session, according to the agency.
A Trump
confidant, Chris Ruddy, told "PBS NewsHour" on Monday that the
president was weighing whether to fire the special counsel now heading up the
investigation, former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
White House
spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday said Ruddy had not spoken to Trump about the
issue and that only the president or his attorneys were authorized to speak
about it.
One of
Trump's lawyers, Jay Sekulow, on Sunday declined to rule out the possibility of
Mueller's firing.
Russia has
denied interfering in the U.S. election. The White House has denied any
collusion with Moscow.
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