Two Democrat senators, one of whom later resigned in disgrace over sexual harassment allegations, pressured the FBI to launch a secret investigation into Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the height of the Russia collusion hysteria that has since been thoroughly discredited.
Newly declassified documents from the White House reveal the FBI opened a probe codenamed “March Toll” into Sessions on May 10, 2017, just one day after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey,” The Daily Signal reports. The investigation, which lasted a full year, was triggered by a letter from Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Al Franken of Minnesota demanding Comey look into whether Sessions lied during his confirmation hearing.
Franken would resign from the Senate in January 2018 over a sexual harassment scandal before the FBI even concluded its investigation of Sessions. Leahy chose not to seek reelection in 2022 after eight terms.
The declassified materials paint a picture of Washington insiders working to target Trump through his first attorney general. Today, practically none of those figures remain in government. Trump is president again.
The FBI classified the Sessions probe as a “sensitive investigative matter” and placed it under “prohibited status” under the authority of Assistant FBI Director E.W. “Bill” Priestap, according to the documents. Priestap was a key figure in launching the broader Russia investigation into Trump. The case file was kept in a sensitive compartmented information facility at the FBI Washington Field Office.
At issue were Sessions’ answers during his Senate confirmation process. In a written question, Leahy had asked whether Sessions had “been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election either before or after election day.” Sessions answered, “No.”
During the January 10, 2017, confirmation hearing, Franken asked a similar question. Sessions replied that he had been called a surrogate in the Trump campaign and “did not have communications with the Russians.”
The Democrat senators pounced after reports emerged that Sessions, while serving as a U.S. senator from Alabama, had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016. In their letter to Comey, Leahy and Franken called Sessions’ testimony “discernibly false” and “unequivocally false.”
Sessions defended himself in a March 6, 2017, letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein before the Democrats formally demanded their probe.
A May 10, 2017, FBI memo noted, “The FBI received the referenced letter dated March 20, 2017, from two U.S. senators.” The memo stated that a crime or “threat to national security has or may have occurred.”
The matter eventually fell under the purview of special counsel Robert Mueller’s office. On May 8, 2018, Aaron Zebley of the special counsel’s office wrote to the investigative team about closing the probe after interviewing the Attorney General and conducting additional investigation.
Sessions had already recused himself from the Russia investigation into Trump by the time the probe into him opened. Later that month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russia collusion, a narrative that ultimately collapsed under scrutiny.
