conversations with any russian officials at the mayflower hotel. i do not have any recollection of meeting or talking to the russian ambassador or any other russian officials. i have never met with or had any conversation with any russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the united states. hi again, everyone. it s 5:00 in the east. that very old piece of testimony from the ex-president s first a.g., jeff sessions, lies at the center of a new chicken or the egg story. in question, whether it was sessions lack of recollections around his contacts with russians or the washington post report that followed disputing his lack of recollections that ignited a maniacal pursuit by the trump justice. we re just learning that a washington post report in july of 2017 about u.s. intelligence finding that russian ambassador
to not using reporter communications to hunt out leaks. this is in questioning from cnn s kaitlin collins. should the government be seizing reporters phone records and emails? and would you prevent your justice department from doing that? only yours. beyond yours no, it absolutely, positively is wrong. simply, simply wrong. so you won t let your justice department do that? i will never let that happen. so katie benner, talk about what has continued under the garland justice department in terms of these cases, these leak investigations. so the leak investigations, these sorts of document requests and sorts of information requests we saw happen at the tail end of the trump administration, the justice department continued to fight for the records and they also continued to fight to prevent companies like the new york times from talking about the fact there was a request made for records. and that did continue under the