Politics

Claire McCaskill Claims She Never Met Russia’s Ambassador, But Her Tweets Suggest Otherwise

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Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill has tweeted in the past about meetings and phone calls she has had with Russia’s ambassador, despite claiming on Thursday that she has never met with or talked to the diplomat.

In a tweet on Thursday, McCaskill sought to show that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ meetings last year with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, were an outlier for sitting U.S. Senators.

The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Sessions met twice with Kislyak in 2016 while he was both a senator and an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Some Democrats are now calling for Sessions’ resignation because they say he lied during his confirmation hearing last month when he said that he did not meet with anyone from the Russian government during the campaign.

Other Democrats say he should at least recuse himself from the ongoing probe into Donald Trump advisers’ contacts with the Russian government.

Sessions has denied misleading the Senate, saying that he met with Kislyak in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee and not as a member of the Trump team.

One of the meetings was in June on the sidelines of an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Sessions reportedly spoke informally with a group of ambassadors. The second meeting was one-on-one in Sessions’ Senate office in September.

Despite her emphatic claims to the contrary, McCaskill, also a member of the Armed Services Committee, does appear to have talked to or met with Kislyak.

McCaskill attempted to clarify the inconsistency in two more tweets later on Thursday. She said that her 2013 meeting with Kislyak occurred with a group of other senators and revolved around the issue of policies regarding the adoption of Russian children.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said on Thursday that he has met with Kislyak in his capacity as a senator. (RELATED: Manchin: ‘I’ve Met With The Russian Ambassador’)

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