nature of confidentiality, separation of powers which is what jeff sessions claimed, it has to be weighed against the other branches of government and needing to know. having checks and balances for the fact that jeff sessions made this claim, contrary to what i m hearing on the other networks, that this is a novel legal concept, it s not. it was cited repeatedly by ben rhodes in the obama administration when they refused to testify at all. jeff sessions comes and testifies and you can say well, because he is testifying, he has to say everything. i don t think that s established at all. bret: byron, back to the look at the hearing, you could see by the fiery exchanges why the attorney general decided to testify publicly. i think he felt wronged by the comey testimony from last week, wanted to set things straight. he was strong on the question of the alleged meeting with the russian ambassador kislyak at the mayflower hotel last april. trump comes to washington, gives
the public as much as he can in both these open and closed sessions, and then he ll try to accommodate mr. mueller s restrictions as well. what a day it s going to be a week from now. pete, thank you so much. pete williams from nbc. this all comes amid new questions about whether the president s inner circle has fully disclosed the extent of their contacts with russian officials. the fbi and the congress are examining whether trump, jared kushner, and jeff sessions met privately with the russian ambassador at the mayflower hotel last april. nbc news reports five current and former u.s. officials said they re aware of classified intelligence suggesting there was some sort of private encounter back then. anyway, a justice department spokesperson says the attorney general did not have any conversation with russian officials at the mayflower hotel. if such a meeting did take place, it would also appear to contradict the attorney general s statement in march that he never discussed the ca
first on attorney general sessions. capitol hill and intelligence sources telling cnn investigators are focusing on a trump campaign event at washington s mayflower hotel last april. a trump campaign event at the mayflower last april. then senator sessions and the russian ambassador, sergey kislyak, attended a small vip reception. among other things, the fbi wants to know if there was an additional private meeting between sessions and the ambassador. sources say if there was such a meeting, it may have been just incidental. sessions has previously failed to disclose meetings with russian officials. he testified to congress he hadn t had communications with the russians, when, in fact, he had met with kislyak twice during the campaign. that gaffe forced sessions to recuse himself from the russia investigation. responding to the latest questions, the department of justice says sessions did not have any private or side conversations with any russian official at the mayflower hotel.