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Sessions initially listed a year's worth of meetings with foreign officials on the security clearance form, according to Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores. But she says he and his staff were then told by an FBI employee who assisted in filling out the form, known as the SF-86, that he didn't need to list dozens of meetings with foreign ambassadors that happened in his capacity as a senator.
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FBI told him that he doesn't need to list them.
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A legal expert who regularly assists officials in filling out the form disagrees with the Justice Department's explanation, suggesting that Sessions should have disclosed the meetings.
"My interpretation is that a member of Congress would still have to reveal the appropriate foreign government contacts notwithstanding it was on official business," said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security law.
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To obtain a security clearance, a federal official is not required to list the meetings if they were part of a foreign conference he or she attended while conducting government business. Sessions' meetings, however, do not appear to be tied to foreign conferences.
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At his confirmation hearing January 10, Sessions testified that he "did not have communications" with the Russians during the campaign. He made the same assertion in an official questionnaire.
He was sworn in as attorney general February 9 and subsequently received a security clearance, even though he didn't mention the Kislyak meetings on his paperwork.
The Washington Post reported March 1 that Sessions had two undisclosed meetings with Kislyak during the campaign, which brought Sessions into the widening Russia scandal for the first time.
Sessions recused himself from overseeing the FBI's Russia investigation one day later.
