Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general. 
 
 One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race. 
 
 The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself. 
 
 When Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, the senator was a senior member of the influential Armed Services Committee as well as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers. Sessions played a prominent role supporting Trump on the stump after formally joining the campaign in February 2016. 
 
 [What Jeff Sessions said about Russia, and when] 
 
 (Senate Judiciary Committee) 
 
 At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign. 
 
 “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.” 
 
 [Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials, key lawmakers to counter Russia stories] 
 
 Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak. 
 
 “There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman. 
 
 (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) 
 
 In January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to written questions. “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote. 
 
 Sessions responded with one word: “No.” 
 
 In a statement issued Wednesday night, Sessions said he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.” 
 
 Justice officials said Sessions met with Kislyak on Sept. 8 in his capacity as a member of the armed services panel rather than in his role as a Trump campaign surrogate. 
 
 “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee,” Flores said. 
 
 She added that Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak. 
 
 In the case of the September meeting, one department official who came to the defense of the attorney general said, “There’s just not strong recollection of what was said.” 
 
 The Russian ambassador did not respond to requests for comment about his contacts with Sessions. 
 
 The Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator, including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year. The other lawmakers on the panel did not respond as of Wednesday evening. 
 
 “Members of the committee have not been beating a path to Kislyak’s door,” a senior Senate Armed Services Committee staffer said, citing tensions in relations with Moscow. Besides Sessions, the staffer added, “There haven’t been a ton of members who are looking to meet with Kislyak for their committee duties.” 
 
 Last month, The Post reported that Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak during the month before Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, and other top Trump officials. Flynn was forced to resign the following week. 
 
 [National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say] 
 
 When asked to comment on Sessions’s contacts with Kislyak, Franken said in a statement to The Post on Wednesday: “If it’s true that Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.” 
 
 Franken added: “It is now clearer than ever that the attorney general cannot, in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and the FBI of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself immediately.” 
 
 Several Democratic members of the House on Wednesday night called on Sessions to resign from his post. 
 
 [Democrats call for Sessions’s resignation and special prosecutor] 
 
 “After lying under oath to Congress about his own communications with the Russians, the Attorney General must resign,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement, adding that “Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country.” 
 
 Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Twitter late Wednesday that “we need a special counsel to investigate Trump associates’ ties to Russia.” 
 
 Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said at a CNN town hall Wednesday night that if the substance of Sessions’s conversations with the Russian ambassador proved to be improper or suspect, he too would join the call for Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation. 
 
 “If there is something there and it goes up the chain of investigation, it is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make that decision about Trump,” Graham said — although he stressed that Sessions’s contacts with the Russian ambassador could have been “innocent.” 
 
 “But if there’s something there that the FBI thinks is criminal in nature, then for sure you need a special prosecutor. If that day ever comes, I’ll be the first one to say it needs to be somebody other than Jeff.” 
 
 Current and former U.S. officials say they see Kislyak as a diplomat, not an intelligence operative. But they were not sure to what extent, if any, Kislyak was aware of or involved in the covert Russian election campaign. 
 
 Steven Hall, former head of Russia operations at the CIA, said that Russia would have been keenly interested in cultivating a relationship with Sessions because of his role on key congressional committees and as an early adviser to Trump. 
 
 Sessions’s membership on the Armed Services Committee would have made him a priority for the Russian ambassador. “The fact that he had already placed himself at least ideologically behind Trump would have been an added bonus for Kislyak,” Hall said. 
 
 Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who until 2014 served as U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he was not surprised that Kislyak would seek a meeting with Sessions. “The weird part is to conceal it,” he said. “That was at the height of all the discussions of what Russia was doing during the election.” 
 
 Two months before the September meeting, Sessions attended a Heritage Foundation event in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention that was attended by about 50 ambassadors. When the event was over, a small group of ambassadors approached Sessions as he was leaving the podium, and Kislyak was among them, the Justice Department official said. 
 
 [FBI once planned to pay former British spy who authored controversial Trump dossier] 
 
 Sessions then spoke individually to some of the ambassadors, including Kislyak, the official said. In the informal exchanges, the ambassadors expressed appreciation for his remarks and some of them invited him to events they were sponsoring, said the official, citing a former Sessions staffer who was at the event. 
 
 Democratic lawmakers, including senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have demanded in recent weeks that Sessions recuse himself from the government’s inquiry into possible ties between Trump associates and Russia. 
 
 Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, became one of the few Republican representatives to state publicly the need for an independent investigation. 
 
 Sessions’s public position on Russia has evolved over time. 
 
 In an interview with RealClear World on the sidelines of the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum in March 2015, Sessions said the United States and Europe “have to unify” against Russia. 
 
 More than a year later, he spoke about fostering a stronger relationship with the Kremlin. In a July 2016 interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sessions praised Trump’s plan to build better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 
 
 “Donald Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this cycle of hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us billions of dollars in defense, and creating hostilities,” Sessions told CNN. 
 
 Asked whether he viewed Putin as a good or bad leader, Sessions told CNN: “We have a lot of bad leaders around the world that operate in ways we would never tolerate in the United States. But the question is, can we have a more peaceful, effective relationship with Russia? Utilizing interests that are similar in a realistic way to make this world a safer place and get off this dangerous hostility with Russia? I think it’s possible.” 
 
 Julie Tate, Robert Costa and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Top GOP lawmaker calls on Sessions to recuse himself from Russia investigation 
 
 Your cheat sheet to four potential investigations of Russia and President Trump 
 
 Flynn’s swift downfall: From a phone call to a forced resignation ||||| Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials. 
 
 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 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. 
 
 One U.S. official said that Sessions — who testified that he had no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration. 
 
 Sessions has said repeatedly that he never discussed campaign-related issues with Russian officials and that it was only in his capacity as a U.S. senator that he met with Kislyak. 
 
 “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. 
 
 [Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault] 
 
 Current and former U.S. officials said that that assertion is at odds with Kislyak’s accounts of conversations in two encounters during 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. 
 
 The apparent discrepancy could pose new problems for Sessions as his position in the administration appears increasingly tenuous. 
 
 Trump, in an interview this week, expressed frustration with Sessions’s recusing himself from the Russia probe and indicated regret at making the lawmaker from Alabama the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Trump also faulted Sessions as giving “bad answers” during his confirmation hearing about his Russia contacts during the campaign. 
 
 Officials emphasized that the information contradicting Sessions comes from U.S. intelligence on Kislyak’s communications with the Kremlin, and they acknowledged that the Russian ambassador could have mischaracterized or exaggerated the nature of his interactions. 
 
 “Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that the Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me,” said a Justice Department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, in a statement. She reasserted that Sessions did not discuss interference in the election. 
 
 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 — was known for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington. 
 
 Sessions removed himself from direct involvement in the Russia investigation after it was revealed in The Washington Post that he had met with Kislyak at least twice in 2016, contacts he failed to disclose during his confirmation hearing in January. 
 
 “I did not have communications with the Russians,” Sessions said when asked whether anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with representatives of the Russian government. 
 
 He has since maintained that he misunderstood the scope of the question and that his meetings with Kislyak were strictly in his capacity as a U.S. senator. In a March appearance on Fox television, Sessions said, “I don’t recall any discussion of the campaign in any significant way.” 
 
 Sessions appeared to narrow that assertion further in extensive testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, saying that he “never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.” 
 
 But when pressed for details during that hearing, Sessions qualified many of his answers by saying that he could “not recall” or did not have “any recollection.” 
 
 A former U.S. official who read the Kislyak reports said that the Russian ambassador reported speaking with Sessions about issues that were central to the campaign, including Trump’s positions on key policy matters of significance to Moscow. 
 
 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. 
 
 By that point, Russian President Vladimir Putin had decided to embark on a secret campaign to help Trump win the White House by leaking damaging emails about Trump’s rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. 
 
 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 2016 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.” 
 
 Later in that hearing, Sessions said that “it’s conceivable that that occurred. I just don’t remember it.” 
 
 Kislyak also was a key figure in the departure of national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to leave that job after The Post revealed that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with Kislyak even while telling others in the Trump administration that he had not done so. 
 
 In that case, however, Flynn’s phone conversations with Kislyak were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, providing irrefutable evidence. The intelligence on Sessions, by contrast, is based on Kislyak’s accounts and not corroborated by other sources. 
 
 Former FBI director James B. Comey fueled speculation about the possibility of a Sessions-Kislyak meeting at the Mayflower when he told the same Senate committee on June 8 that the FBI had information about Sessions that would have made it “problematic” for him to be involved in overseeing the Russia probe. 
 
 Comey would not provide details of what information the FBI had, except to say that he could discuss it only privately with the senators. Current and former officials said he appeared to be alluding to intelligence on Kislyak’s account of an encounter with Sessions at the Mayflower. 
 
 Senate Democrats later called on the FBI to investigate the event in April at the Mayflower hotel. 
 
 Sessions’s role in removing Comey as FBI director angered many at the bureau and set in motion events that led to the appointment of former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III as a special counsel overseeing the Russia probe. 
 
 Trump’s harsh words toward the attorney general fueled speculation this week that Sessions would be fired or would resign. So far, he has resisted resigning, saying that he intends to stay in the job “as long as that is appropriate.” 
 
 Matt Zapotosky and Julie Tate contributed to this report. ||||| The news that Jeff Sessions met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice last year may be the political smoking gun Democrats have been looking for. | AP Photo Sessions under fire over Russia meetings Leading Democrats demand his resignation. 
 
 Top congressional Democrats called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign Wednesday after revelations that he had met with the Russian ambassador in the months before the election — meetings that Sessions did not disclose during his confirmation hearings. 
 
 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led the effort late on Wednesday night, accusing Sessions of "lying under oath" during confirmation proceedings about his contacts with the Russians. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 "The Attorney General must resign,” Pelosi wrote in a statement. “There must be an independent, bipartisan, outside commission to investigate the Trump political, personal and financial connections to the Russians.” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House oversight committee, also called on Sessions to resign, as did Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). 
 
 In a statement in the wee hours of Thursday morning, Sessions said, "I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign." 
 
 "I have no idea what this allegation is about," he added in his short statement. "It is false." 
 
 The news — first reported by the Washington Post — that Sessions met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice last year, including a conversation in Sessions' Senate office, may be the political smoking gun Democrats have been looking for. They've been pushing for months to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate any ties between Donald Trump's campaign and Russian government officials, following a steady drumbeat of news stories saying there had been repeated contacts. 
 
 It wasn't just Democrats amping up the pressure. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said a special prosecutor should be appointed if investigators find any evidence of wrongdoing by the Trump campaign, adding that Sessions should recuse himself from any investigation into contacts between the campaign and Russia. 
 
 "I don't know that there's anything between the Trump campaign and the Russians. I'm not going to base my decision based on newspaper articles," Graham (R-S.C.) said during a CNN town hall where he appeared with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "If there is something there, and it goes up the chain of investigation, it is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make this decision about Trump." 
 
 An Obama White House national security official said the administration was gravely concerned in its final days about increasingly apparent ties between Trump associates and Russians, and about what appeared to be promises made by more than one individual to representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin about policy changes that would occur once Trump was sworn in as president. 
 
 The senior Obama White House official was not told the names of the specific individuals involved because the official’s portfolio was foreign policy, not intelligence, so they were not briefed on aspects of the investigation involving U.S. persons. 
 
 Sessions under fire over Russia meetings poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201703/3539/1155968404_5345187457001_5345175869001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 “It seems pretty clear that [former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn] was not a rogue here,” the senior official said. “I don’t believe that Flynn was the only person promising things to the Russians, communicating to them what would happen once the Trump administration came in.” 
 
 The senior official was not aware of any specific information suggesting that Sessions was one of the Trump associates discussing potential changes in U.S.-Russia relations once Trump was sworn in. 
 
 These latest developments come amid a sharp dispute in Congress over how to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia, with Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees questioning whether their Republican chairmen are fit to lead impartial probes. 
 
 House Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Senate Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) both made calls to reporters at the behest of the White House to challenge reports of repeated contacts during the campaign between Trump aides and Russian officials, as The Washington Post reported over the weekend. 
 
 And Nunes appeared to prejudge the outcome of his committee’s investigation on Monday, telling reporters that intelligence officials had shared with him the high points of their investigations and that he had seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chastised Nunes later that day, saying their committee investigation was only in its initial stages and hadn’t even begun collecting evidence. 
 
 Many Democrats and a few Republicans — including McCain and Graham — have called for a select committee to investigate the issue, but GOP leaders have so far rejected those calls, which would give them less control over the course of the investigations. 
 
 According to the Wednesday Post story, Sessions’ conversations with Kislyak took place in July and September. The second meeting reportedly occurred in Sessions' Senate office. Sessions did not disclose those discussions during his January confirmation hearing in response to a question. 
 
 Sessions was asked directly by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.): “If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” 
 
 Sessions responded, “Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” 
 
 In a separate exchange, Sessions was pressed on whether he would recuse himself from an investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. At the time, he said, "I don't think I've made any comment on this issue. ... I would review it and try to do the right thing as to whether not it would stay within the jurisdiction of the attorney general or not." 
 
 Sarah Isgur Flores, a Sessions spokesperson, said: "There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer," during the confirmation process, noting that he had over 25 conversations with ambassadors as a member of the Armed Services Committee. 
 
 "He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee," Flores said. 
 
 A senior Trump campaign national security adviser confirmed the broad outlines of the Wednesday Post story, and said that Sessions not only spoke briefly with Kislyak at the GOP convention in Cleveland, but that the senator was then invited to a lunch at the ambassador’s house to continue the conversation. 
 
 After discussing the potential downside of the lunch given the allegations of Russian hacking of the election, Sessions declined the lunch, according to the senior campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is being considered for jobs in the Trump administration. 
 
 Sessions spoke to Kislyak at an event sponsored by the State Department and Heritage Foundation that brought about 50 ambassadors to both parties’ nominating conventions in July, the adviser said. 
 
 At the GOP one, Sessions gave a keynote luncheon address, where he was clearly identified as a senior national security adviser to Trump. As he was walking out, he was approached by a few of the ambassadors, including Kislyak. 
 
 “He had individual sidebar conversations with the ambassadors,” the advisor said of Sessions. “There were a lot of other people there, a big scrum of people walking and talking. I saw them talking, but I don’t know what they said.” 
 
 The adviser said there was nothing nefarious about the conversations between the ambassador and Sessions, and that that is perhaps why the senator didn’t mention it during his confirmation hearings or in other venues. 
 
 “I don’t know why he would do that, if that’s what he did,” the adviser said. “Maybe he thought [the conversation] was in his capacity on [the Senate] Armed Services Committee. But why the senator wouldn’t explain the conversations, I don’t know.” 
 
 Josh Gerstein and Henry C. Jackson contributed to this story.
– Jeff Sessions spoke with Russia's ambassador to the US twice in 2016, but he didn't disclose those communications during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general. When asked about possible contact between Moscow representatives and Trump campaign members, Sessions specifically said he "did not have communications with the Russians" during the campaign and that he was "not aware of" any other campaign members doing so. Per the Washington Post, the revelation from Justice Department officials could spark more calls from Congress to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Russia's alleged attempts to interfere with the 2016 election. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal US investigators have looked into the newly released contacts between Sessions and Russia, though it's not clear whether the investigation has concluded. Following the disclosure of the conversations, Sessions said he "never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign," per the AP. One of the conversations between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak happened in September, when Sessions, then a senator, was a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and one of Trump's top advisers; officials say Sessions didn't remember the details of his conversations with Kislyak by the time his confirmation hearing came around, and that the meeting was related to Sessions' work on the armed services panel, not the Trump campaign. Sessions' spokesperson says there was nothing "misleading" about his answers at the confirmation hearing because he was only asked about communications related to the campaign, not to his work as a senator. Following the latest revelations, top Democrats have called for Sessions to step down as AG, Mediaite reports. Republicans are split on whether Sessions should lead any potential probe into Russia's alleged election tampering. A conversation with Kislyak is also what forced Michael Flynn to step down as Trump's national security adviser.