Attorney General Jeff Sessions used his own political funds and spoke about Donald Trump's presidential campaign last year during an event at the Republican National Convention where he met with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, The Wall Street Journal reported.
However, the Trump administration has said Sessions was acting in his role as senator when he spoke to the ambassador.
Sessions, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, appeared at a Heritage Foundation event during the RNC in Cleveland in July 2016, a person at the event told the Journal.
Sessions was a campaign "volunteer" when he met with the Russian ambassador, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told White House reporters Friday, according to The Hill.
"Please explain to me how volunteers meeting at a conference where nearly 80 ambassadors attended is a story. I guess it’s kind of lost on me where that would be newsworthy in any capacity," Sanders said.
Sessions said Thursday he would recuse himself from any probe related to Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign after details came to light that he had met with the ambassador despite saying during his confirmation hearings that he had not.
When an attorney general recuses, the deputy attorney general steps in to make decisions about the case that the AG recused. A special prosecutor or independent counsel for the case can not be appointed, because the law that created that kind of prosecutor in 1999, and Congress did not renew it, according to The New York Times.
Virginia attorney Dana J. Boente, the acting deputy attorney general, could appoint a special counsel, who would still be answerable to the attorney general and the president, the Times reported.
White House representatives and Sessions said the meeting was part of Sessions’ duties as an Alabama senator, not a campaign official, although Sessions was the chairman of Trump’s National Security Advisory Committee at the time.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies are overseeing a probe into alleged communications between Russians and Trump campaign team members, the Journal reported.
Campaign finance disclosure forms show that Sessions used money from his reelection campaign account for travel expenses to the Republican convention, although official government funds would have paid for his travel.
Larry Noble, the general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said that Sessions probably used that his campaign funds because of his role in the Trump campaign, saying that Sessions could not have defended against claims that he was there for Trump's campaign if he had used government money to travel there.
"If he was truly there solely as a member of the Armed Services Committee, then he could’ve used his legislative account," Noble said.
Sessions, in February 2016, became the first then-current U.S. senator to endorse Trump, and was a frequent surrogate for him in TV appearances, the Journal reported.
Experts have said that Sessions' comments are likely not to result in perjury charges.
"Perjury is a very difficult charge to prove," Laurie L. Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, told Business Insider.
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