Why Would Jeff Sessions Hide His Talks With Sergey Kislyak?

Obama had inherited a plan for an aggressive missile-defense system for Eastern Europe that was a major irritant to Moscow. Kislyak, who studied physics, was an expert on arms control, and explained that the system was not solely defensive, as the Bush Administration had insisted. A radar system to be deployed in the Czech Republic was of particular concern to Kislyak.

“I was the new guy, so I was willing to listen,” McFaul, who later became Obama’s Ambassador to Russia, said. “He was lecturing me about the dual capabilities of that radar and that it had capabilities against Russia. And I said, ‘That’s news to me.’ And he said, ‘Well, you need to learn.’ ”
.. “He could have been rough and abrasive and a Putin-style Russian Cold Warrior, which he was not. He played it very softly. Because he was not what people expected him to be, he ingratiated himself with the audience. ”
.. He’s very good on the geopolitical stuff and the domestic political stuff. Not shy, very understated.”
.. Despite the high regard in which he was held, Kislyak increasingly found that he had almost no audience in Washington.
.. Sessions insisted that he met with Kislyak only in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee. McFaul scoffed at that idea. “He’s meeting with Senator Sessions because of his relationship to Trump, not because of what he does on the Senate Armed Services Committee,” he said. “We now know he’s the Attorney General, but back then he was talked about for all kinds of jobs, including Secretary of Defense.”
.. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, had several conversations with Kislyak during the transition. In December, he met with Kislyak at Trump Tower, along with Jared Kushner, to “establish a more open line of communication in the future,” according to the White House.
.. To some extent, they all share Kislyak’s view that America, through nato and its eastern expansion, has been needlessly hostile to Russia, that Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty is a nuisance issue, and that the U.S. and Russia could be united by the common threat from isis.
.. The suggestions that there’s something wrong with speaking to Kislyak is “really sensitive to me because, when I was the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, that’s what the Russian government did to me,” McFaul added. “They really discouraged people to meet with me that were not part of the government, and if there was ever a meeting with someone defined as the opposition it became crazy, awful, page-one news that I was meddling in their internal affairs. We don’t want to become that.”

The Washington Post doesn’t actually quote Jeff Sessions and the Context

But here’s the thing. In this nearly 2,000-word article, the Post apparently couldn’t find the room to include the actual question Franken asked. Instead, the authors wrote:

At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

I am not saying that this is an indefensible paraphrase of Franken’s question. Certainly, a lot of Democrats think this gets to the heart of it. But a lot of other people think it doesn’t capture it at all.

Here’s what Franken’s asked Sessions in its entirety:

CNN has just published a story and I’m telling you this about a story that has just been published, I’m not expecting you to know whether it’s true or not, but CNN just published a story, alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that quote “Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” These documents also allegedly say quote “there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.” Again, I’m telling you this is just coming out so, you know . . . but, if it’s true it’s obviously extremely serious. And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russians in the course of this campaign, what will you do?

A reasonable person — a category that I think includes Jeff Sessions — can read this and believe that the crux of the question Franken is asking can be found in that last sentence: “And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russians in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”

And it just so happens that’s the question Sessions answered.

.. He told me that the Post has a giant screen on the wall of the newsroom that displays in real-time their web traffic. Ben noted that nearly all of the most-read stories were anti-Trump. He asked whether we can rely on the press to be objective when all the market incentives are for Trump-bashing all the time.

.. One of the great (or terrible) things about the Internet is that it allows the suits to put numbers behind everything a journalistic outfit puts out. This makes it easier for editors to substitute data for their own judgment. The same dynamic was at work with the advent of sophisticated TV ratings.

.. In the world of business, this kind of thing is a huge boon. Walmart’s revolutionary impact on retail stems in no small part from its ability to micro-slice data so they can manage their inventory in incredibly efficient ways. The Peoria, Ill., store sells nine sets of Wolverine superhero underoos every week while the Gary, Ind., franchise only sells three but it also moves a huge amount of air fresheners (because Gary smells so bad), etc.

But journalism is supposed to be different. Editors are supposed to use their judgment about what information readers should get. Sometimes, this involves a lot of eat-your-spinach reporting that isn’t exactly sensational or sexy — but is important nonetheless.

.. And while obsession with web-traffic statistics is a real problem (back when I ran NRO, I’d hit refresh on the traffic software like a monkey hitting the pellet dispenser in a cocaine study every few seconds), the real problem is that we are in an era of groupthink, populist fervor, and cultural and political panic.

.. The New York Times refused to quote Jeremiah Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric even as it reported on the controversies about it.

.. like with the Post leaving out Franken’s actual question — isn’t to say the editors didn’t have defensible arguments for their decisions, it’s simply to say that the media have a tendency to look for excuses to invoke their ideals when that will yield the kind of news that supports their ideological or partisan leanings.

Liberals have either not noticed this or dismissed this tendency for the most part, because it comports with their own ideological and partisan worldview. But conservatives have noticed. That’s why Donald Trump’s “fake news” rhetoric has such wide currency on the right.

.. To the extent that Donald Trump has damaged democratic norms (and he has), his success is attributable to the fact that elites — in journalism, but also in academia and elsewhere — have corrupted those norms to the point where a lot of people see them as convenient tools for only one side in the political and cultural wars of our age.

.. There’s a reason why so many conservatives have become perverse acolytes of Saul Alinsky. They think the Left broke all the rules and therefore the only recourse for the Right is to play by the same tactics. The problem with this approach is that when you adopt amoral (or immoral) means, those means tend to create new ends: Winning.

.. It’s telling how the chief defense of Trump’s behavior during the campaign was, “At least he fights!” Conservatism isn’t supposed to be just about fighting, it’s supposed to be about fighting for something. Populism is about winning for its own sake.

.. Donald Trump didn’t create the deterioration, but the way he practices politics is having a centrifugal effect on the process, pulling things apart even more.

.. It’s sort of like what football would look like if you removed all the rules save for the requirement to get touchdowns (and, I suppose, the requirement to relinquish the ball after scoring), with the fans cheering whatever brings victory to their team. A player killed a guy? At least he fights!

Senate votes to shut up Elizabeth Warren

Almost instantly, social media propelled the episode into a national storyline.

In her letter, first reported by the Washington Post, King urged the Senate three decades ago to reject Sessions’ bid to become a judge.

“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge,” King wrote in her letter back then, which Warren read on the Senate floor Tuesday night. “This simply cannot be allowed to happen.”

But as Warren said those words, Republicans took offense. First, she was warned by the presiding officer — at the time, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) — that she was violating Senate rules against impugning another senator.

Warren protested, saying she was merely repeating the words of King. But she was allowed to continue to talk, so she did, and Warren finished reading King’s letter.

“Mrs. King’s views and words ring true today,” Warren said. “The integrity of our Justice Department depends on an attorney general who will fight for the rights of all people. An honest evaluation of Jeff Sessions’ record shows that he is not that person.”

But a little while later as Warren continued to speak, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came to the floor.

“The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama,” McConnell said, referring to Warren’s recitation of the part of King’s letter that warned Sessions would “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”

.. Warren insisted that she was “surprised” that reading King’s letter would not be appropriate debate in the chamber and asked for permission to continue speaking.

McConnell objected to that request from Warren, which was upheld in the GOP-controlled chamber. Warren immediately appealed that ruling so she could finish her speech against Sessions, but the Senate voted along party lines to shut down that appeal.

Now, she can no longer talk until the floor fight over Sessions’ nomination is over. His confirmation vote is expected Wednesday evening.

Trump’s hard-line actions have an intellectual godfather: Jeff Sessions

Sessions’s ideology is driven by a visceral aversion to what he calls “soulless globalism,” a term used on the extreme right to convey a perceived threat to the United States from free trade, international alliances and the immigration of nonwhites.

.. From immigration and health care to national security and trade, Sessions is the intellectual godfather of the president’s policies.

.. The author of many of Trump’s executive orders is senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a Sessions confidant who was mentored by him and who spent the weekend overseeing the government’s implementation of the refu­gee ban.

.. The mastermind behind Trump’s incendiary brand of populism is chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who, as chairman of the Breitbart website, promoted Sessions for years.

.. Then there is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who considers Sessions a savant and forged a bond with the senator while orchestrating Trump’s trip last summer to Mexico City and during the darkest days of the campaign.

.. In an email in response to a request from The Washington Post, Bannon described Sessions as “the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy” in Trump’s administration, saying he and the senator are at the center of Trump’s “pro-America movement” and the global nationalist phenomenon.

.. “In America and Europe, working people are reasserting their right to control their own destinies,” Bannon wrote. “Jeff Sessions has been at the forefront of this movement for years, developing populist nation-state policies that are supported by the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans, but are poorly understood by cosmopolitan elites in the media that live in a handful of our larger cities.”

.. The senator lobbied for a “shock-and-awe” period of executive action that would rattle Congress, impress Trump’s base and catch his critics unaware, according to two officials involved in the transition planning. Trump opted for a slightly slower pace, these officials said, because he wanted to maximize news coverage by spreading out his directives over several weeks.

.. Trump makes his own decisions, but Sessions was one of the rare lawmakers who shared his impulses.

“Sessions brings heft to the president’s gut instincts,” said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. He compared Sessions to John Mitchell, who was attorney general under Richard M. Nixon but served a more intimate role as a counselor to the president on just about everything. “Nixon is not a guy given to taking advice, but Mitchell was probably Nixon’s closest adviser,” Stone said.

.. Sessions has also been leading the internal push for Trump to nominate William H. Pryor Jr., his deputy when Sessions was Alabama’s attorney general and now a federal appeals court judge, for the Supreme Court. While Pryor is on Trump’s list of three finalists, it is unclear whether he will get the nod.

.. Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House and informal Trump adviser, said, “Sessions is the person who is comfortable being an outsider to the establishment but able to explain the establishment to Trump. There is this New York-Los ­Angeles bias that if you sound like Alabama, you can’t be all that bright, but that’s totally wrong, and Trump recognized how genuinely smart Sessions is.”