Politics

ACLU Hits Jeff Sessions With Bar Complaint Over Russia Misstatements

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

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Kevin Daley Supreme Court correspondent
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The ACLU has filed an ethics compliant with the Alabama State Bar Association alleging Attorney General Jeff Sessions misled the Senate Committee on the Judiciary during his confirmation hearings, after he failed to disclose two meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Sessions was first licensed to practice law by the Alabama bar, making the organization the proper venue for such a complaint.

“Mr. Sessions made false statements during sworn testimony on January 10, 2017, and in a subsequent written response to questions on January 17, 2017,” the complaint alleges, in reference to his denials of contacts with members of the Russian government. “Rule 8.4 (c) of the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct states that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to ‘engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.'”

The AG argues his responses to the questions were truthful, because both questions specifically solicited contacts with Russian officials that were relevant to the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said during a press conference, after The Washington Post first reported his meetings with Russian ambassador. The White House was similarly assertive in its defense of Sessions.

The ACLU is less confident, and argued the AG lied under oath, warranting an ethics review by the bar association.

“Few events are more corrosive to a democracy than having the Attorney General make false statements under oath about a matter the Justice Department is investigating,” said Christopher Anders, the ACLU lawyer who lodged the complaint. “No attorney, whether just starting out as a new lawyer or serving as the country’s top law enforcement officer, should lie under oath.”

“The Alabama bar must investigate this wrong fully and fairly,” he added.

Any potential bar association review notwithstanding, a perjury charge is exceedingly unlikely.

You can read the complaint at this link.

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