Attorney General Jeff Sessions is heading to Capitol Hill—again.
On Tuesday, Sessions will testify before the House Judiciary Committee for the fourth time this year. It’s a regularly scheduled visit—after all, Sessions technically reports to the committee—but the timing of this visit should make for a particularly tense conversation.
The last two weeks have been very busy on the news front. It was reported that George Papadopoulos made a plea deal that led to the indictment of Paul Manafort and Richard Gates. Then Carter Page testified that Sessions knew more about Russia than he claimed. And to top it all off, Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Sessions’ old Alabama Senate seat, has been accused of sexually assaulting or harassing minors.
Here’s what to watch for:
The Truth, The Whole Truth, and…
As the Los Angeles Times points out, in each of Sessions’s previous three appearances before the Committee, he has denied having knowledge of the Trump campaign’s contact with Russia. But these claims have proved wrong or incomplete. Last week, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called out Sessions directly when they wrote to him saying, “The facts appear to contradict your sworn testimony on several occasions.” Democrats want clarification on his earlier statement—and to know whether he lied to the committee on purpose.
Lock Her Up
On Monday, Sessions made progress on setting up a special counsel to look into the Clinton Foundation’s involvement in an Obama-era uranium deal and what that might mean for the Clinton campaign. He asked senior prosecutors to look into this and other issues with the Clinton campaign to assess whether a special counsel is needed. Expect a lot of finger pointing as Sessions and the Republicans on the committee try to divert attention away from the Trump campaign and toward the Clinton campaign.
Whither Alabama
Even before The New York Times reported that the White House was considering running Sessions as a write-in candidate, it would’ve been pretty hard to avoid the elephant in the room: the accusations of sexual misconduct swirling around the race to fill Sessions’s old seat. The Republican party remains divided over what to do—Should Roy Moore step down? Should his Senate colleagues expel him if he wins? Would Sessions return to his former seat? And who would then be Attorney General?
