CBS This Morning journalist Anthony Mason on Thursday cited a man who compared Donald Trump to the Nazis as an example of supposed building pressure “from the right” on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Talking to Republican operative Dan Senor about two meetings Sessions had last year with the Russian ambassador, Mason hyped, “There's pressure in some cases coming from the right on this.”
He then quoted, “Richard Painter, the former White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush in a tweet said, ‘Misleading the Senate in sworn testimony is a good way to go to jail.’” Perhaps Painter isn’t the best example of the everyday voice from the right.
Other tweets from Painter include comparing lack of journalist access in the Trump White House to a Nazi “press conference” by Joseph Goebbels. On another occasion, he retweeted a picture of Trump with the words, “Hitler didn’t start by killing millions. He started by attacking the press.”
Painter writes for the Huffington Post and has authored pieces such as this one from 2013: “U.S. Senate Succumbs to NRA Protection Racket.”
Senor wasn’t having any of this and told Mason on CBS that the attacks on Sessions were ridiculous: “Based on what I know so far, it looks ludicrous that he should resign and I think Democrats calling who are calling for resignation are really overreaching.”
NBC also hyped Painter. On The Today show, Peter Alexander promoted, “Overnight, President George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer tweeted, ‘Misleading the Senate in sworn testimony about one's own contacts with the Russians is a good way to go to jail.’”
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CBS This Morning
3/2/17
7:10:17 to 7:13:30NORAH O’DONNELL: Dan Senor was a senior adviser to the Romney/Ryan presidential campaign in 2012 and he joins us now from Washington. Good morning, Dan.
DAN SENOR: Good morning, Norah.
O’DONNELL: A spokesperson for the Department of Justice tells CBS News that Sessions last year that Sessions had conversations with 25 different foreign ambassadors in his job as a senator then on the Armed Services Committee. Why does this conversation with the Russian ambassador matter?
SENOR: Well, it matters because there continues to be this web of question about connections, conversations, potential coordination as it is alleged between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. But you're right. Any U.S. Senator — I worked for a senator who did not serve on the Foreign Relations Committee and in any given year he was meetings with tens of ambassadors and these were typically very pro-forma meetings, not a lot of substance discussed, kind of box checking. And so, I think the Trump administration has to get to the bottom of how they're going to, sort of, explain all this communication between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the course of the campaign.
I do not think it's as big a deal as others do. But as it relates to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to lie to Congress, you have to willfully know you're actually misleading Congress and the material has to be material. It has to be extremely relevant to the focus of any kind of investigation. In this case, I actually think then-Senator Sessions had no idea that meeting with one ambassador over another was materially significant. It appears that there's no way for him to have known this was in the context — his meeting was in the context of questions swirling around any kind of an investigation about the campaign and connections to the government.
MASON: But Dan, there's pressure in some cases coming from the right on this. Richard Painter, the former White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush in a tweet said, “Misleading the Senate in sworn testimony is a good way to go to jail.” I mean, so how does the Trump administration respond to this situation with Sessions at this point?
SENOR: Well, I think you've got to break these into packages into two difference tracks. One track is should he resign? And I actually— Based on what I know so far, it looks ludicrous that he should resign and I think Democrats calling who are calling for resignation are really overreaching. The other question, which I think is going to become the focus of a more substantive debate and serious debate is whether he should recuse himself from anything related to an investigation about Russia. He may be under pressure from that and I think some Republicans as you point out —
MASON: What's the threshold for that, Dan?
SENOR: You know, it's quite ambiguous. It really is. It's whether or not they believe they can raise serious doubts about his ability to oversee an investigative body that will be dealing with these allegations of the campaign ties to Russia. And let me make one other quick point here: One of the challenges here is there's complete opacity about who all of these representatives were from the U.S. — Russian government that were apparently operating on behalf of Putin or associates of Putin. There was always confusion of who was with the Trump campaign. Who was actually speaking to whom is something we just don’t know yet.
