Attorney General Jeff Sessions is in for sharp questioning by senators Tuesday on the extent of his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign and of his involvement in the firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Sunday "there's a real question of the propriety" of Sessions' involvement in Comey's dismissal, because Sessions had stepped aside from the federal investigation into contacts between Russian Federation and the Trump campaign.
It later came out in closed session questioning that Sessions had yet another meeting with Russian ambassador to the US and purported spymaster Sergey Kislyak.
In a letter Saturday, Sessions writes that his decision comes in light of last week's testimony by fired FBI Director James Comey.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said "there's a real question of the propriety" of Sessions' involvement in Comey's dismissal, because Sessions had stepped aside from the federal investigation into contacts between Russian Federation and the Trump campaign.
Members of the intelligence committee are in the middle of an investigation and have "access to relevant, classified information", Sessions said.
Mr. Sessions had planned to appear before the Senate and House Appropriations Subcommittees, but the deputy attorney general will take his place, the letter said.
Comey said during his testimony that he asked a friend to release contents of the memos he'd written about his conversations with the president to a reporter.
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Briefing congressional appropriators on the Justice Department's budget is a critical part of the attorney general's job. There had been some question as to whether the hearing would be open to the public, but the Justice Department said Monday he requested it be so because he "believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him".
Sessions was scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday for the first time since he was confirmed as attorney general in February.
"I assume that this [hearing] will be public", Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said on CBS' Face the Nation program.
With reports circulating that Trump had been clashing with his attorney general, and that Sessions had offered to resign, the White House on Tuesday declined to say whether the president maintained confidence in Sessions.
Senators had been pushing for Sessions to appear publicly to answer questions about his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.
The attorney general cited his involvement in Trump's campaign for stepping away from the Russian Federation investigation in March. Feinstein is the top Democrat on that panel and a member of both. Feinstein said the Judiciary Committee should investigate. "Doing policy by tweets is really a shakeup for us, because there's no justification presented".
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen of The Associated Press and by Ros Krasny, Mark Niquette, Chris Strohm, Todd Shields and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News.
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