When President Donald Trump fired now-former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn last month for meeting with the Russian ambassador during the transition period, the Democrats clearly smelled blood in the water. Now their feeding frenzy is fixed on Attorney General Jeff Sessions for meetings he had during the election period with the very same Russian ambassador that he failed to disclose. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has even just joined a chorus from his party calling on Sessions to resign.
This is a scandal! A Conspiracy! The end of the Republic!
Not so much.
In fact, while it was bad enough to lose Flynn, if Sessions is forced to step down it will be worse news for the White House, America, and even the anti-Trump Democrats who can't let go of their still unproven Russian conspiracy theories.
There are two big reasons why.
First, there is simply no evidence of any wrongdoing and even the "appearance of impropriety" argument here is more than a normal stretch. Second, this particular Russian conspiracy nonsense is doing serious damage to the entire country politically and culturally. And the people promoting this theory are actually suffering the most damage themselves.
Let's start with the "evidence" in this case. It turns out one of the "meetings" was an informal encounter on the sidelines of the GOP convention in July. The second appears to have been a routine visit by Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to Sessions' office in September when Sessions was a member of the Senate Armed Services committee.
As for allegations that Sessions lied under oath by not disclosing these meetings during his confirmation hearings, Sessions spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said there was nothing "misleading about his answer" to Congress because he was asked during the hearings about "communications between Russia and the Trump campaign, not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee." And Flores later noted that in 2016, Sessions had over 25 conversations and meetings with foreign ambassadors.
Franken: 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: Senator Franken, I'm not aware of … uh … any of those activities. I had been called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communication with the Russians and I'm unable to comment.
Other than Sessions not adding the phrase "about the campaign," after saying "I did not have communication with the Russians," there's no "there" there. Watch the video for yourself of the exchange and decide if you see anything resembling a big lie or scandal at all.
In America, we don't indict senators on committees that deal with foreign relations for having meetings with the officially recognized ambassadors of major powers. The encounter at the Republican Convention also appears to have occurred in a group setting and can hardly be called a "meeting." And the question he was asked during his confirmation hearing was clearly about formal and/or nefarious Russian involvement in the Trump campaign and not connected to his routine meetings a member of the Senate. Sessions was never even working directly with the Trump campaign anyway, he was simply an early supporter of the candidate. All of that distinguishes Sessions greatly from Flynn, who allegedly discussed U.S.-led sanctions against Russia late last year.
But we have a bigger problem than just the fact that so many people are jumping to wild conclusions about Sessions with no evidence. The more dire issue is that we have two sources for this Russian hysteria who don't seem to care how much damage they're causing along the way. The first source is the Democratic Party, which has become obsessed with creating a retroactive election scandal and a scapegoat for its stunning loss in that election. That's a big problem for everyone because it keeps the Democrats from coming to grips with the true reason for their loss and reconnecting with the voters who rejected them in November. And for non-Democrats, this is bad news because whipping up anger and fear over supposed foreign tampering in our election sets an unnecessarily nasty tone to our already broken political dialogue.
