22 July, 2017
In a separate development on Friday, the Senate judiciary committee said that next week it would interview the president's son, Donald Trump Jr, and his former campaign chief Paul Manafort behind closed doors rather than in public testimony, as originally planned.
The Judiciary Committee had requested that both appear at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, and threatened to issue subpoenas if they refused.
During his confirmation hearings, Sessions told the Senate that "I have been called a surrogate [to the Trump campaign] and I did not have communications with the Russians".
News earlier this month of the meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer whom he was told had damaging information about his father's presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, fueled questions about the campaign's dealings with Moscow.
U.S. President Donald Trump's outside legal team spokesman has resigned amid media reports the team is being reorganized as investigations continue into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible collusion with Trump's campaign. I'm assuming that was between Mr. Donald Trump Jr., between Don Jr. and his lawyer.
If proven, Veselnitskaya's contacts with the FSB - the successor to the Soviet-era KGB - could add to concerns the Trump 2016 campaign team may have colluded with the Kremlin in its apparent bid to help tip last year's United States presidential election in Trump's favor. He later claimed that the meetings weren't about the Trump campaign.
The Post on Friday cited anonymous US officials who described USA intelligence intercepts of Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's descriptions of his meetings with Sessions, who was a Trump foreign policy adviser and now serves as attorney general.
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and top White House aide, also attended the meeting.
Mark Corallo, who was handling the fallout from the Russian election meddling probe, has resigned from Team Trump.
Kushner was among the participants at a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian-American lawyer. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
He and Manafort have been scheduled to testify before the committee on Wednesday.
The committee has issued a subpoena for Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, the political firm that compiled a dossier of unverified information compiled for Trump's political opponents. The firm is also involved in the Russian Federation probe. Trump has criticized Comey for leaking to the press.
