WASHINGTON: Finally, after months of battering in the media and in congressional hearing, a senior aide put up a solid defence for the embattled US president, Donald Trump, in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon.

In his two-and-a-half-hour long testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejected the allegation the Trump team conspired with Russia to rig the 2016 elections and also dismissed the suggestion that President Trump tried to prevent a former FBI director from probing the allegation.

Instead of buckling under pressure, Sessions repeatedly refused to answer questions about his private conversations with President Trump, including whether he spoke to Trump about former FBI director James B. Comey’s handling of the probe into Russian election meddling.

The attorney general, who was speaking under oath, said he did not have a separate meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Washington, Mayflower Hotel, during an April 26, 2016, event for the Trump campaign. “I did not have any private meetings, nor do I recall any conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel. I did not attend any meetings at that event separate,” Sessions said.

But when confronted by a barrage of questions, he created room for himself to avoid the charge that he lied under oath. “It would’ve been certainly, I can assure you, nothing improper, if I’d had a conversation with him. And it’s conceivable that that occurred. I just don’t remember it.”

Under another intense grilling from a Democrat, Senator Kamala Harris, he said: “Will you let me qualify it? If I don’t qualify it, you’ll accuse me of lying. So, I need to be correct as best I can.” His remark that “I’m not able to be rushed this fast, it makes me nervous,” earned him the sympathy of two powerful senators, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee John McCain and Richard Burr, who heads the intelligence committee. Both asked Senator Harris to let Sessions answer her questions.

Sessions also rejected the charge that Comey was fired to stop him from probing allegations of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Comey was sacked because of how he handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation, he said. Sessions said Comey’s decision to publicly recommend not seeking charges in the email investigation was a “breath-taking usurpation of the responsibility of the attorney general.”

The US media, however, pointed out that Sessions contradicted President Trump’s comment after Comey’s firing that the Russia investigation factored into the firing.

Sessions refused to answer a host of questions about the Russian probe, saying that since he had recused himself from the investigation, he had no information.

As attorney general, Sessions had signed Comey’s firing order but said this did not violate his recusal because it’s his job to do so.

Sessions also refused to say whether he talked to President Trump about firing Comey and whether the Russia investigation was part of the conversation about the firing. “I am not stonewalling,” he said in response to an accusation he was covering up conversations with the president. “I’m protecting the president’s constitutional right” by not discussing private conversations with him, he said.

Sessions discredited Comey’s claim that he wanted the attorney general to stay in the meeting he had with Trump on Feb 14 when the president asked the FBI director to stop investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn. “I left. It didn’t seem to me to be a major problem. I knew that Director Comey, long-time experienced in the Department of Justice, could handle himself well.”

He also downplayed Comey’s request that he never be left in the room alone with Trump again, saying, “he gave me no detail about what it was that he was concerned about.”

Sessions said he recused himself from the Russian probe because of department regulations, not because he felt he could be a subject of the investigation. “I recused myself that day,” he said of the day after he was confirmed. “I never received any information about the campaign.”

The attorney general criticised anyone suggesting he or the Trump team had ties to Russia, saying there’s no evidence to prove this charge.

After the hearing, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that President Trump thinks the attorney general “did a very good job” in his testimony.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2017