Russian foreign minister echoes Trump, calls Sessions scandal ‘a witch hunt’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov weighed in Friday amid reports of contacts between members of the Trump campaign-turned-administration and Moscow, using a phrase that mimicked Trump’s response to the simmering scandal.
“All this looks very much like a witch hunt,” Lavrov said, according to the RIA news agency.
Lavrov’s remarks came hours after President Trump characterized the controversy swirling around Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a “total witch hunt.”
“Jeff Sessions is an honest man,” Trump said in a statement, which he also tweeted. “He did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional.”
Interesting word choice by Russian FM Lavrov this morning pic.twitter.com/rcXhPSByL2
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 3, 2017
Earlier Thursday, Sessions recused himself from the Department of Justice’s probe into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election after it was revealed by the Washington Post that he had met twice with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign — when Sessions had been serving as an advisor to Trump — but failed to disclose the meetings during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Sessions clarified that his reply was “honest and correct as I understood it at the time.”
“Let me be clear: I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said at a hastily called press conference at the Justice Department late Thursday afternoon. “And the idea that I was part of a ‘continuing exchange of information’ during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government is totally false.”
Related: Sessions, under fire, recuses himself from probe of Trump-Russia contacts
“This whole narrative is a way of saving face for Democrats losing an election that everyone thought they were supposed to win,” Trump continued. “The Democrats are overplaying their hand. They lost the election, and now they have lost their grip on reality. The real story is all of the illegal leaks of classified and other information. It is a total ‘witch hunt!’”
Lavrov defended the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, saying he did nothing wrong, either.
“The contacts that our Russian ambassador was making and continues to make, I can say only one thing: Ambassadors are appointed to maintain relations with the host country,” Lavrov said. “Relations are maintained.”
Kislyak, who was appointed to his post in 2008, has emerged as a central figure in back-to-back controversies involving the Trump administration.
Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, was fired last month after it was revealed that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contact with the Russian ambassador.
The New York Times reported late Thursday that Flynn and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, had their own previously undisclosed meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower to “establish a line of communication” with Moscow.
For Kislyak, the Associated Press made its own, mimic-worthy comparison.
“Moscow’s top diplomat in the United States has become the Kevin Bacon of the Trump White House’s Russia imbroglio,” the AP said.
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