Members of the Senate intelligence committee expressed confusion over why Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not disclose his conversations with the president.
Sessions said his decision to accept the intelligence committee's invitation to appear was due in part to Comey's testimony. To his boss? To his former Senate colleagues?
Sessions became visibly angry when asked about former FBI Director James Comey's testimony last week that aspects of the attorney general's recusal were problematic.
In his testimony last week, Mr Comey accused the White House of lying about him and the FBI and repeatedly said he believed he was sacked because of the agency's investigation into Trump-Russia ties.
Sessions got angry again when Wyden pressed Sessions to explain what facts might be "problematic "about his involvement in the Russian Federation probe, as Comey suggested".
As to Justice Department policy on executive privilege, Sessions began to have a lot of memory issues, and hostile observers will count how many times he said "I don't know" or "I don't recollect" or "I would need to consult my notes" and similar expressions. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., suggested the attorney general was ducking questions, angering Sessions.
"You are obstructing this congressional investigation by not answering these questions", Martin Heinrich, a Democratic senator from New Mexico, warned him.
As a longtime senator from Alabama, Sessions will be granted some degree of deference, at least from Republicans. Days after that, Sessions also corrected his confirmation hearing testimony to inform the committee about his two meetings with Kislyak. Some say he perjured himself. He later amended the record by revealing he had met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, twice over the course of the 2016 campaign.
COTTON: Have you ever in any of these fantastical situations heard of a plotline so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and an ambassador of a foreign government colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history of history of (inaudible)?
Sessions hedged nearly all of his answers about whether/when he met with Russians, or why he was involved in firing Comey, or how he feels about the president's decisions, with: "I don't recall" or "I believe so" or "maybe". And asked about Trump's own contention that he fired Comey with the Russian Federation probe in mind, and regardless of any recommendation from anyone else, Sessions said: "I guess I'll just have to let his words speak for themselves".
"I recused myself from any investigation into the campaign for president, but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false allegations", he said.
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If Sessions actually knew Trump wanted Comey gone over the Russian investigation and helped engineer a different rationale, that would violate his recusal of all matters Russian in a way that could lead to obstruction of justice suspicions for him as well as the president. We know, because Donald Trump told us, that the real reason he fired Comey was because of the former FBI director's approach to the Russian Federation investigation.
Sessions said Comey did not tell him why he was agitated. "I just finished Ignatius's book".
Trump has also signaled his disappointment with Sessions in recent weeks, but for different reasons.
When Comey testified, there was nobody carrying water for the White House on the Senate Russia probe - even though half of the panel is comprised of Senate Republicans.
On the other hand, Sessions told the Senate intelligence committee that he and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had discussed removing Comey as FBI director and agreed that it was time for a "fresh start" at the bureau before either man was confirmed to their current positions. When he wasn't lying he said he could not recall.
Mueller, Rosenstein said, has the "full independence he needs to conduct that investigation".
Harris: Are you willing or are you not willing to give him the authority to be fully independent of your ability, statutorily or legally, to fire him? You half expected him to say: "You know how he is". Susan Collins, R-Maine.
"I believe the American people have had it with stonewalling".
He also said Comey should have shared his concerns about the Trump conversation with another Justice Department official, Dana Boente, who was then acting deputy attorney general, and would have been Comey's direct supervisor.
House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested Tuesday that questions about Mueller were sparked by a "rumor that's not happening" and causing a "debate that is not occurring".
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