win the election. so, you go to people who have inside access to that candidate to try to tease out information. the russian ambassador at a minimum was on an information gathering effort and they didn t have to talk about was donald trump going to win michigan or an electoral college victory. so anything he could glean from that about donald trump and the direction of the people who were around him and their policies was important. that s right. and let s not forget for a while there, senator jeff sessions, the only person in the u.s. senate who had endorsed then candidate donald trump, it was a big part of his biography in 2016. dan ryan, amanda lar, thank you so much. the president says the raid in yemen the cost the nachl itch seal his life was highly successful and seals were able to gather large amounts of vital intelligence and now we are learning more just about exactly what was collected including we are told a list of contacts for al-qaeda. that story next. here s to the wi
his mind think that his meetings with the ambassador with kislyak had anything to do with this news story and even his follow-up question during the press conference he was still thinking of it in that other framework, not his meetings with kislyak. now, it s still a little unclear if in that moment he recalled those meetings because you will remember last night the department of justice initially said that he didn t remember the meeting and through time he s had some more clarity, clearly was able to talk about the fact, they talked about terrorism and other issues. but it s worth pointing out that he is, of course, russia s ambassador to the u.s., but also he s considered in the view of the fbi and intelligence agencies to be a top spy for russia. he s someone to be considered someone who will go back to russia and share intelligence, what he collects in the united states. and, so, this isn t just some, you know, ambassador. this is someone that the u.s. views as a spy which could be
days of their administration. you know what s interesting, amanda, is that president trump has declared several times that russia is fake news. anything having to do with russia is fake news. and he s right in the sense that when it comes to michael flynn and now attorney general sessions, they have been saying things that were fake news, at least according to their critics. they have been saying things that were not true. flynn was not honest with vice-president pence, and now many members of the senate judiciary committee think that senator sessions now attorney general sessions was not honest with them. that s fake news. well, here s the thing that republicans on the hill will have to consider, and i m asking myself. is this just sloppy staff work, where they just didn t remember the meeting, or did they not want people to know this meeting occurred? i m worried for jeff sessions. i can t manl as a staffer, he talked about in this press conference there were two members of senio
why do you think he sought the meeting with you? did he consider you a representative of trump? i think ambassadors are always out trying to find out things and advance their agenda. most of the countries that ambassadors i met with, they would layout the case for ukraine, would layout his case, poland laid out his case, latvia, lithuania, hungary, japan, canada, australia. i met with all of those ambassadors over the year, so, i think that s why. did you consult with the white house about your decision and just to follow on the last question, with hindsight, do you believe that this is a coincidence that the russians asked you for a meeting? do you believe you were targeted because it came at the height of russia s interference and at the same time then candidate trump was giving an interview to r.t. saying he didn t believe there was anything to the reported
and parsing going on. i didn t meet with russians to discuss anything having to do with the political campaign. that doesn t mean he didn t speak to the russians about crimea or sanctions or any number of issues that might be relevant. right. and that s why it s very important for a.g. sessions to clarify what the conversation was. washington post describes two conversations, one that was inside the r nickell robey-coleman c. i don t think that is the one that is being scrutinized. it s the conversation jeff sessions had in his personal senate office. there seems to be some dispute whether the ambassador met with sessions in the office face to face or whether that was over the phone. but the content of that discussion, session seems to be maintaining that it was not related to the campaign, but to have a conversation with this person on september 9th in the midst of the campaign in the midst of the leaks is sort of, is unbelievable that something around the campaign was not discussed