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WAPO: Sessions discussed Trump campaign-related matters with Russian ambassador

S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
AhWbDKL.jpg
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
This seems big, but to what extent can it be a "his word against mine" situation? How reliable is the Russian ambassador's word here?

(Even given that it was intercepted, etc.)
 
V

Vyse The Legend

Member
Morts said:
Seems like Sessions can just claim the ambassador was lying/exaggerating the extent of his conversations.
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Except there are audio tapes and transcriptions of their conversations. This story is based on sources who have heard/seen the intercepted communications.
 
M

Man-is-Obsolete

Member
epmode said:
I assume that "intercepted" means that we have actual audio of these discussions between Kislyak and other Russians.
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It is Kislyak talking with Russians back home about his conversations with Sessions after they took place.

Sessions and Trump and all of their little tv minions will spin this as a Russian's word against their own, but to hell with that. Don't hold private shady meetings with Russians, and then lie about it and put yourself in a he said, he said situation. If their was nothing to hide there would have been witnesses and contemporaneous notes about the meetings, and disclosure of those meetings.
 
B

BoboBrazil

Member
Sounds like Russia just gave Trump a perfect reason to fire Sessions, funny how that happens when Trump wanted a reason to fire him so his replacement can fire Mueller.
 
S

skullmuffins

Banned
Mayflower Hotel + RNC meetings. Sessions is fucked.

”I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign," Sessions said in March when he announced that he would recuse himself from matters relating to the FBI probe of Russian interference in the election and any connections to the Trump campaign.

Current and former U.S. officials said that assertion is at odds with Kislyak's accounts of conversations during two encounters over the course of the campaign, one in April ahead of Trump's first major foreign policy speech and another in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
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Sessions had a third meeting with Kislyak in his Senate office in September. Officials declined to say whether U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted any Russian communications describing the third encounter.

As a result, the discrepancies center on two earlier Sessions-Kislyak conversations, including one that Sessions has acknowledged took place in July 2016 on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
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Although it remains unclear how involved Kislyak was in the covert Russian campaign to aid Trump, his superiors in Moscow were eager for updates about the candidate's positions, particularly regarding U.S. sanctions on Russia and long-standing disputes with the Obama administration over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

Kislyak also reported having a conversation with Sessions in April at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where then-candidate Trump delivered his first major foreign policy address, according to the officials familiar with intelligence on Kislyak.

Sessions has said he does not remember any encounter with Kislyak at that event. In his June testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sessions said, ”I do not recall any conversations with any Russian official at the Mayflower Hotel."
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Officials emphasized that the information contradicting Sessions comes from U.S. intelligence on Kislyak's communications with the Kremlin, and acknowledged that the Russian ambassador could have mischaracterized or exaggerated the nature of his interactions.

Russian and other foreign diplomats in Washington and elsewhere have been known, at times, to report false or misleading information to bolster their standing with their superiors or to confuse U.S. intelligence agencies.

But U.S. officials with regular access to Russian intelligence reports say Kislyak — whose tenure as ambassador to the United States ended recently — has a reputation for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington.
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P

Primus

Member
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials both in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.
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IC stepping up again here, throwing a few choice bombs out to warn Trump about firing Mueller.
 
Z

Zolo

Member
GrizzleBoy said:
We already did.

Why do you think he decided to throw him under the bus this week and start separating himself?
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Yep. His comments were kinda strange this week considered their caught up in the same shit. They make sense since we now know about this.
 
M

Man-is-Obsolete

Member
But U.S. officials with regular access to Russian intelligence reports say Kislyak � whose tenure as ambassador to the United States ended recently � has a reputation for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington.
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This is very important note when it comes to Sessions vs Kislyak's word. That and the secrecy and lies from Sessions about the meetings.
 
A

androvsky

Member
But U.S. officials with regular access to Russian intelligence reports say Kislyak — whose tenure as ambassador to the United States ended recently — has a reputation for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington.
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Sessions can try to say Kislyak is just bragging, but it's not going to get him far.
 
S

Shauni

Member
Furyous said:
If he quits Trump can fire Mueller after hiring a new AG, allegedly.
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Isn't the duty on Rosenstien, even if a new AG is appointed? I feel like I read that, but it seems there's a lot of contradictory info about the process of how this works
 
T

TheCochese

Banned
Shauni said:
Isn't the duty on Rosenstien, even if a new AG is appointed? I feel like I read that, but it seems there's a lot of contradictory info about the process of how this works
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If Sessions is fired, Rosenstein becomes the acting AG in full unless there's something fucked up I don't know about.
 
S

skullmuffins

Banned
Shauni said:
Isn't the duty on Rosenstien, even if a new AG is appointed? I feel like I read that, but it seems there's a lot of contradictory info about the process of how this works
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No, control over Mueller belongs to the acting AG. Rosenstein is currently the acting AG in this matter because Sessions recused; if a new, non-recused AG is appointed, oversight will fall back to him/her.
 
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