Rand Paul on Sessions controversy: Time to move on

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday urged lawmakers to move past controversy surrounding Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., saying it distracted from the GOP’s policy priorities.

“I think we need to get beyond this and really start getting to some of the things that need to be fixed in the country,” Paul said during an interview on Fox News’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”

“The biggest debate in the Capitol and in the country right now is what to do with healthcare, and so I think we need to home in on that and I think that hopefully the press conference by the attorney general will help us get on to business,” he added.

Paul’s remarks came after Sessions held a press conference to announce that he would recuse himself from any federal investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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Paul similarly defended the Trump administration last month, pushing back on calls for a congressional investigation following the ouster of Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, when it was revealed he misled Vice President Pence about his own conversations with the Russian ambassador. 

“I just don’t think it’s useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,” Paul said at the time.

Sessions faced intense pressure to recuse himself after The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the former Trump surrogate twice spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign.

The former Alabama senator had said during his confirmation hearings that he hadn’t been in contact with Russian officials. Sessions later said he never met with any Russian official during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

“If we’re going to have everybody go that makes a misstatement on whether they met an ambassador or not, we’re going to have some people going,” Paul said Thursday.

Paul appeared to wave off the attorney general’s meeting with Kislyak during the Republican National Convention last summer, pointing out that Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) had also previously met with the Russian ambassador.

“I mean we had one senator already on the other side of the aisle said she never met with a Russian ambassador until someone looked at her Twitter and found out sure she met with a Russian ambassador, she just forgot,” Paul said.

“So, I mean I think we ought to take a step back here and be a little bit more rational about whether or not it’s appropriate or inappropriate for senators to meet with a U.S. ambassador.”

A spokesperson for McCaskill, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Sessions also sat on while in the Senate, said Thursday that in 2013 the McCaskill “did attend a group meeting about adoptions with other Senators, and had a brief proactive call with the ambassador amid calls to several other parties to the Iran nuclear deal.”

“Attorney General Sessions, on the other hand, misled the Senate under oath,” the spokesperson said.