I know this is Thursday and the Jeff Sessions hearing was on Tuesday, but there was a lot to process and go over both visually and mentally. For one thing I was right that Sessions would be the guy that would take the "bullet" for Trump in this hearing. He wasn't going to answer a lot of questions, but the way he tried to dodge the questions actually made it worse for Trump instead of saving his face. Let's get down to the big parts of the hearing....
"I do not recall/recollect."
That was a phrase Sessions repeated over and over again during to hearing to make it seem that he either totally did not remember any of the events or situations presented to him or he could not remember those events like if he was in the same room as Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. In that instance he said he didn't recall, but later on said, "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." Well... obviously something happened, but you just don't want to let us know.
"I don't want to answer this question in case the President invokes executive privilege."
There is NO LEGAL PRECEDENT or even a judicial regulation that prevents a person from revealing information about what a President has said or done if in the future they decide to not want to have said person talking about whatever incriminating remarks the President has said. I know that was a mouthful, but seriously... President Trump has not invoked executive privilege yet which means you can tell Congress exactly what has been told to you from him in any shape or form. Sessions did not serve Trump well here once he got to the line of questions in which he repeatedly said that line.
Another example to this was when Sessions was asked if he would answer the same questions in a closed meeting and he replied that executive privilege would be exempt from those meetings which would make Sessions' question dodging and fortune telling obsolete. Remember when Mark McGwire kept pleading the Fifth Amendment during Congress' hearing on steroid usage in baseball? That is essentially what Sessions was doing for a good chunk of the time he was being questioned.
Body Language
For someone that has made a career in the legal field Sessions would make for a terrible poker player. Every time Sessions dodged a question that he knew the actual answer to but would not answer he would give a wide smile followed by his trade mark "I do not recall" or "I have no recollection." I even noted this as I watched the questioning unfold:
Sessions has a huge smile reading the recusal rules. Looked like a child that got away with stealing from the cookie jar. #SessionsHearing— Trump Monitor Blog (@TrumpMonitorBlg) June 13, 2017
No doubt about that. When he smiles you know he thinks he got away with one.— Trump Monitor Blog (@TrumpMonitorBlg) June 13, 2017
ConclusionHeinrich gets on him about impeding the investigation and Session responds with a smile. He knows he is covering the truth. #SessionsHearing— Trump Monitor Blog (@TrumpMonitorBlg) June 13, 2017
In the end it left a sour note on the investigation for both sides. The Democrats couldn't get him to answer anything that would have been groundbreaking (which satisfied the GOP) and the Republicans had to (at least some of them) be scratching their heads at the fact that Sessions left more to be desired in the hearings instead of going to task and halting the investigation in its tracks. Geraldo Rivera said it best when it was all over:
If you haven't done so go and check the GOP's twitter account before and during the Sessions' hearing. It's easy to see they were doing damage control and trying to paint a rosier picture about this whole investigation. They know they have a lot of ground to cover and it isn't over yet.#SessionsHearing will change no minds. Left will point to "can not recalls" as evasive. Right will repeat there is no evidence of collusion.— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) June 13, 2017
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