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Legal experts think Jeff Sessions is in a whole mess of trouble
VoxDuring his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified, under oath, that “I did not have communications with the Russians.” We now know, thanks to the Washington Post, that this is false: Sessions met with the Russian ambassador to the US twice in the past year, when he was serving as both a Trump adviser and a US senator.
The million-dollar questions: Did Sessions break the law? And, if so, could he lose his job — or even be charged with perjury like someone who lied in court? To find out, we reached out to several legal experts who study relevant topics. The general sense was that if Sessions didn’t commit outright perjury, he came uncomfortably close.
“I think a jury presented with evidence that he did have meetings with the Russians during the relevant time period could conclude that he perjured himself in front of the Senate committee,” Stuart Green, a law professor at Rutgers who studies the law of lying, wrote via email.
It’s very unlikely that Sessions will be prosecuted under laws criminalizing perjury, owing both to laws protecting sitting Congress members (which he was at the time of testimony) and due to the difficulty of proving a lie. But there already have been consequences for him: on Thursday afternoon, Sessions announced that he would be recusing himself from any future investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia. That might just be the beginning: a special prosecutor could be appointed, or, even worse, the Senate could begin something called “contempt of Congress” proceedings.
And the consequences could extend beyond Sessions — potentially landing any Trump administration officials who helped him prepare his testimony in legal trouble.
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(I hope his career goes off the side of a bridge)
