Moscow’s shadow

Moscow’s shadow

Less than three weeks after the resignation of Michael Flynn, U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, over failure to disclose contact with Russian officials, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now staring down the barrel of similar allegations, intensifying a storm that the White House was already struggling to cope with. This week Mr. Sessions faced three distinct, serious questions regarding his conduct in this context. First, did he have an undisclosed meeting with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in September? Second, if he did make such contact with Russian officials, was there not a conflict of interest in the Attorney General overseeing an investigation into Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the November 8 presidential elections? Third, did he then perjure himself during his confirmation hearing in the Senate when he appeared to fudge a direct question about contact with Russian officials? The first and second questions have already been answered — investigations by the Washington Post revealed that Mr. Sessions and two senior aides met with Mr. Kislyak in his Senate office on September 8, about a month before the Obama administration accused the Russian government of interfering with the U.S. election process and three months before it ejected 35 Russians diplomats from their U.S. posts and slapped sanctions on Moscow.
Under immense pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill, on Thursday Mr. Sessions recused himself from the inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the election. They must now wait for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, which Mr. Sessions heads, to get details on the nature of contact that Russian officials had with Mr. Sessions, Mr. Flynn, and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, White House adviser Jared Kushner. The law enforcement machinery must then determine whether U.S. national security was in any way compromised by those interactions. The third question regarding whether Mr. Sessions lied under oath to Congress about his meetings, a potential felony under U.S. law, may make his continuance in office uncertain. The combined weight of the conversations that he and other Trump team members had with those officials makes Moscow’s fingerprint on American politics hard to ignore. This saga leaves a heavy question hanging over the sovereignty of U.S. foreign policy in the days ahead. President Trump, who’s come to office on an “America First” battle cry, will struggle yet more to counter the allegations of Kremlin’s hand covertly influencing policy. The denouement matters immensely to the outcomes in Syria, the future of the embattled European Union, and across an increasingly multi-polar world.