The FBI opened a probe into sitting Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May 2017 for potentially making false statements to Congress about Russian contacts even though he had already updated the disputed testimony, newly declassified documents show.The evidence to support the probe — codenamed MARCH TOLL and opened one day after FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump — was a weeks-old letter from Democrats and an article from a liberal news site, the memos show.
The bureau’s investigative files into the Sessions matter were declassified by President Donald Trump and made public Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force.
The investigation was predicated on evidence contained in a March 20, 2017, letter to Comey from two Democrat senators on the Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Al Franken of Minnesota.
The senators argued that Sessions made false statements in his confirmation hearing earlier that year when he testified about communications with members of the Russian government.
A Trump administration official told reporters the timing of the investigation raises concerns because it was opened right after Comey’s firing and more than a month and a half after the Democratic senators wrote to the FBI.
Just the News reported last week that the FBI also opened another investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – the following week into President Trump, alleging the newly elected president may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired Comey.
The FBI’s probe into Sessions for possible false statements has been public since 2018, when Session’s lawyer told the media that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team had interviewed the Attorney General and decided not to move forward. Mueller, who was appointed to investigate allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia shortly after Comey’s firing, concluded in his final report that his office could not prove Sessions was “willfully untruthful.”
Sessions told lawmakers that he “did not have communication with the Russians”
Mueller’s Trump-Russia collusion probe has since been discredited. An investigation by Special Counsel John Durham – released by the Biden Justice Department in 2023 – concluded there was no basis for the FBI to even open the original Crossfire Hurricane investigation into allegations of Russia collusion, for example.
In January 2017, Sessions told lawmakers that he “did not have communication with the Russians” when asked whether anyone affiliated with Trump’s campaign communicated with that country’s government. Later reporting showed that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador to the United States on at least two occasions during the Trump campaign and while he represented Alabama in the Senate.
Sessions sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6 to supplement his prior testimony, confirming that he did, in fact, meet with the Russian ambassador twice during the campaign season, but that his answer, “I didn’t have–did not have communications with the Russians […]” was truthful because Franken asked about a “continuing exchange of information during the campaign” between agents of the campaign and the Russian government.
“I did not mention communications I had had with the Russian Ambassador over the years because the question did not ask about them,” Sessions wrote in the letter.
The supplementary testimony was not enough to satisfy Leahy and Franken, who then wrote to Comey raising concerns about Sessions’ statements to their committee and accusing him of possibly committing perjury.
“We are concerned by Attorney General Sessions’ lack of candor to the Committee and his failure thus far to accept responsibility for testimony that could be construed as perjury,” Leahy and Franken, members of the Judiciary Committee, wrote to Comey on March 20, 2017.
Comey “violated long-standing department practice and protocol” IG says
However, the FBI did not act on the letter until the day after President Trump fired FBI Director Comey, citing a Justice Department belief that Comey mishandled the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The department’s own independent Inspector General would later conclude that Comey “violated long-standing department practice and protocol” with his conduct in the Clinton case.
The FBI’s opening memo shows that the investigation into Sessions was first opened at the FBI’s Washington Field Office at the direction of headquarters solely predicated on the March 20 letter from Sens. Leahy and Franken. The file also noted that Comey notified then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on April 28 that the case would be opened.
Not until May 23 was Sessions’ supplementary testimony added to the investigative file, in which the Attorney General argued that he had been truthful to the committee about his contacts with Russian government officials.
That same day, agents added two open source articles – one from the Huffington Post and another from The National Interest magazine – as evidence of an alleged third meeting between Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. That meeting allegedly took place during an event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Center for the National Interest. Then-candidate Trump delivered a foreign policy speech at the event.
The Trump campaign had nothing to do with the seating arrangement
The Center for the National Interest released a public statement on March 8 about the event, clarifying that they invited the Russian ambassador and that “the Trump campaign did not determine or approve the invitation list.” FBI agents added this statement to the investigative file.
“We regularly invite ambassadors and other foreign representatives to our events to facilitate dialogue. Ambassador Kislyak was one of four foreign ambassadors who attended the speech that day. We seated all four in the front row during the speech in deference to their diplomatic status. The Trump campaign had nothing to do with the seating arrangement,” the center said.
By March 2018, Special Counsel Mueller’s office had decided to close the investigation into Sessions for “potential false statements or perjury,” according to an email contained in the declassified documents release.
The FBI filed the official closure on May 8, 2018, nearly one year to the day after opening the probe. “The Special Counsel’s Office concurs with the request to close the investigation and provided written notification reflecting as such on May 8, 2018,” the closing memo reads.
