Sessions scandal: ‘US heading to constitutional crisis’

The Democrat attack on the Attorney General is not accidental as he would be dealing with accusations against the administration of fraternizing with Russians - the latest US hysteria, says Gilbert Doctorow of the American Committee for East-West Accord.

The Trump administration is fighting off yet more allegations of improper contact with Moscow during the presidential race. Now it's the turn of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who met with Russia's ambassador to the US during Donald Trump's campaign, which was reported by the Washington Post.

Sessions was a senator at the time and didn't mention the meetings during his January confirmation hearing to become Attorney General. He denies allegations that he misled on purpose.

The Kremlin reacted to the allegations, saying it was not aware of any meetings between Jeff Sessions and the Russian ambassador, adding that the scandal was not “Moscow's headache.”

Meanwhile, both Republican and Democratic senators said meeting foreign diplomats is part of a senator's job.

"This is a political assassination under way,”Gilbert Doctorow of American Committee for East-West Accord, said commenting to RT.

“The point is the US is heading into a constitutional crisis. I think it is impossible for President Trump to avoid taking steps that otherwise he would hope to postpone, otherwise he would enjoy basking in his great success on Tuesday evening's address to the nation – the support that he had from the whole Republican side of the House, and from a good number of Democrats as well. All of that is vitiated by this latest round of a political assassination attempt on one of his close advisers. I think it is not accidental that precisely Jeff Sessions has come in the sights of those who want to neuter, to destroy the Trump presidency. He is as Attorney General in control of the FBI, he is the one, who would be acting, or not acting on all of the accusations being made against the administration and the entourage of Trump for collusion with Russians, or for simply fraternizing with Russians, which has become our present hysteria, our present McCarthyite atmosphere cause for bringing down the government.”

'Hysterical nonsense'

There’s nothing sinister about Sessions talking to the Russian ambassador, says Lew Rockwell, political analyst and author.

RT: We just heard US senators saying there's nothing wrong with meeting with a Russian ambassador, so why the controversy here?

Lew Rockwell: It is the deep state. American mainstream media has been showing since the Church hearings and many other investigations, might as well juts be a part of the CIA. So this is just the more of the campaign against Trump, against having a friendly relationship with Russia. It is all the baloney about Russia having intervened in the American elections. By the way, the way the US intervenes in every single Russian election and elections all around the world, I don’t think the Russians intervened in the American elections. Certainly Sessions talking to the Russian ambassador at a Heritage Foundation party – there is nothing sinister about it. No ambassador is ever that country’s top spy. I mean in some sense every diplomat is a spy. This is just a hysterical nonsense that is being peddled.

Even if the Russians did intervene, what did they want? Did they want atomic secrets, or that kind of stuff? No. What they wanted was – peace with the US, no more US aggression against Russia, and trade. Get rid of the sanctions, let’s have friendly relationship, exactly the relationship by the way that the US should have with every single country in the world, whether it is China, or Venezuela, or Iran, whomever. This is the proper foreign policies laid out by George Washington so many years ago. This hostility, this Cold War-esque, baloney is not having an effect on the American people. This is an entirely DC hysteria. Yes there were Republicans as well as Democrats who hate the guts of the Trump administration and would love Hillary back in chart.

RT: During a news conference on Thursday, Sessions was pretty adamant and direct that he is not stepping down, as he claims he has done nothing wrong. He said he has examined the rules of ethics and they have not been broken. What are your thoughts on his statement?

LR: I think pretty much everything he said was good. I don’t like the recusal business. After all he is not a judge. So for him to do this, when we know that the deep state wants a special prosecutor, who would be loyal to them, and who could make up all kinds of stuff, that part is unfortunate. We just have to see what develops. But let’s remember the Democrats used to be very pro-Russia, when there was Stalin. When Stalin and Lenin were in charge, they liked Russia. They set up the export and import bank to fund trade with Russia. Of course they were Russia’s ally in WWII. Now that Russia is …no longer Communist, it has much freer market and no Gulag, they hate its guts. Seems to me there is something wrong about that.

RT: The House speaker Paul Ryan commented on the scandal saying there's no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Why is there such hysteria about this?

LR: There’s hysteria because again it’s the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, or at least the elements within those intelligence organizations and other unnamed intelligence organizations that seek to overthrow the President. They seek to toss him out and to install a Hillaryite or neocon in the White House instead. They want Cold War, some of them want “hot war” with Russia. They want much more military spending, they want many horrible things. So this is all a generated hysteria. This people are all puppets. They’re like “Pravda” and “Izvestia” in the old days. There has been a switch here, a very unfortunate switch, I must say.