Analysis: 40 questions for Jeff Sessions

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify in open session Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

It will be his first public appearance on the Hill since Jan. 10, when he falsely said at his confirmation hearing: "I did not have communications with the Russians."

James Comey's testimony last week raised a host of news questions about the attorney general's Russia contacts, his role in firing the FBI director and whether he's fully abiding by the recusal he agreed to.

Sessions has been criticized in some quarters for being evasive. The ex-Alabama senator had committed to testify before two congressional committees last month and then canceled on short notice. On Saturday night, he did it again. He announced that he'll send a deputy to answer questions before the House and Senate appropriators who control his budget, a highly unusual move.

The attorney general announced that he would appear instead before the Intelligence Committee. His aides initially suggested to reporters that they agreed to do so with the belief that this hearing would be closed to the public, unlike the ones he backed out of. But under pressure from Democrats on the committee, Chairman Richard Burr (R., N.C.) and Ranking Member Mark Warner (D., Va.) announced Monday that the 2:30 p.m. hearing will be open to the public.

It's also widely understood on Capitol Hill that Sessions has more friends and allies who will back him up on the Intelligence committee than the Appropriations subcommittee that has DOJ oversight.

Here are a few of the subjects the nation's chief law enforcement officer is likely to be pressed on during his testimony, which will take place in the same hearing room where Comey appeared last week:

• Did Sessions have a third meeting with Sergey Kislyak? He did not acknowledge meeting twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the campaign — in his Senate office and in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention — until the Post reported the news in March. Now there are reports of a possible third meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in April 2016, when both men came to see Donald Trump deliver a Russia-friendly foreign policy address.

• Comey told senators during a classified session last week that investigators believe a third meeting might have happened, based in part on Russian-to-Russian intercepts in which it was discussed, according to CNN. The AG's spokesman strongly denies that there was a meeting, and Comey reportedly acknowledged that Kislyak may have been exaggerating his connections to his superiors.

During the public part of the hearing, Comey testified cryptically that the FBI had information about Sessions - before he recused himself — that would have made it "problematic" for him to be involved in the Russia probe. "He was . . . inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons," Comey said. "We also were aware of facts that I can't discuss in an open setting that would make [Sessions's] continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic." What was this information?

• Comey said Trump asked Sessions to leave the room at the end of a meeting on February 14 so that the two of them could speak privately. That was the day after former national security adviser Michael Flynn had resigned. It was during this meeting that, according to Comey, Trump said: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go."

The fired FBI director said, "My sense was the attorney general knew he shouldn't be leaving, which is why he was lingering." Does Sessions believe he lingered? If so, was it for the reason Comey identified? Does he believe it was appropriate for the president to ask him to leave the room? Did he have any prior knowledge of what Trump planned to discuss with Comey? Did he ask either Comey or Trump what they discussed later?

• Comey said he told Sessions after that Feb. 14 meeting that he did not want to ever be left alone again with Trump. "It can't happen that you get kicked out of the room and the president talks to me," he said he told his boss. The former FBI director was asked how he responded. "I have a recollection of him just kind of looking at me," Comey said of Sessions. "His body language gave me the sense like, 'What am I going to do?' . . . He didn't say anything."

Sessions' spokesman disputed Comey's version of events, insisting that the director had not presented his concerns so directly and that the attorney general was not silent.

What exactly did Comey tells Sessions? How did Sessions respond? Did Sessions discuss Comey's request not to be left alone with anyone else? Did Comey's request, if he made it, worry Sessions that something improper was going on?

• Comey testified that he wrote extensive, real-time notes of his conversations with Trump because of "the nature of the person." "I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document," the ex-director said.

Does Sessions believe Trump's version of events over Comey's? Does he take contemporaneous notes about his conversations with the president?

• Sessions was involved in firing Comey. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has told Congress that he learned on May 8 that Trump intended to remove the FBI director during a meeting with the president and Sessions. The AG then wrote a letter to the president, dated May 9, formally recommending that he remove Comey, attaching a similar letter from Rosenstein. Trump told NBC on May 11 that he "was going to fire (Comey) regardless" of these letters.

Did Sessions know that? Did Trump mention or allude to the Russia investigation during this meeting? Did Sessions talk with Trump about getting rid of Comey before May 8? Was he concerned when the White House said the president's decision was entirely because of Rosenstein's recommendation?

Trump said during the NBC interview that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he chose to fire Comey. Did he tell Sessions this? If Comey was fired because of the Russia investigation and Sessions knew about it, was it appropriate for him to be involved in light of his recusal? "That's a question I can't answer," Comey said last week. "I think it's a reasonable question. If, as the president said, I was fired because of the Russia investigation, why was the attorney general involved in that chain? I don't know, and so I don't have an answer for the question."

• The attorney general offered to resign at one point in recent months after his relationship with Trump grew increasingly tense, according to several people close to the White House. The strain between the two reportedly began because Sessions recused himself and Trump didn't feel like he should have. "The president's anger has lingered for months," Robert Costa and Sari Horwitz reported last week.

Did Trump ever directly express frustration to Sessions about the recusal? Was there a specific incident that prompted Sessions to offer his resignation?

• Sessions's spokesman said last week that the attorney general has "not been briefed on or participated in any investigation within the scope" of his recusal since March 2.

Was Sessions briefed on the Russia investigation before his recusal? What does Sessions see as "the scope" of his recusal? What safeguards now exist to prevent him from violating the terms?

Since the recusal, even if he's not making decisions, has he had discussion about the Russia investigation with anyone at the White House — including Trump?

• Sessions was involved in selecting Christopher Wray as FBI director. Did Sessions discuss either Comey's termination or the Russia investigation during his job interview?

• Trump claims he did not ask Comey for his loyalty. "I didn't say that," the president said Friday. "(But) there would be nothing wrong if I did say it." Does Sessions agree with the president that there would be nothing wrong if he had asked for Comey's loyalty?

• The nation's top intelligence official told associates in March that Trump asked him if he could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on Flynn. "On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies," Adam Entous reported last week. "As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. . . . After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate."

Did the president ever make any kind of request like this to Sessions? Was Sessions aware of what Trump had asked of Coats before the Post revealed the conversation? Does the attorney general think that request was inappropriate?

• Trump declared Friday that he is "100 percent" willing to speak under oath with special counsel Robert Mueller about his Comey conversations. Is Sessions also willing to do so? Has he had contact with Mueller?

• The president has hinted that he surreptitiously recorded his private meetings with Comey, but he's declined to confirm the existence of such recordings. "I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the very near future," the president told reporters Friday.

Does Sessions know if the tapes exist?If the tapes exist, does he believe the president is obligated to release them?

• Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney who was fired by Trump, said Sunday that he reported to the Justice Department efforts by the president to "cultivate some kind of relationship" with him, describing phone calls from Trump that made him increasingly uncomfortable. "In his first sit-down interview since his March removal, Bharara said he reported one of the phone calls to the chief of staff for Sessions because it made him uneasy," Sandhya Somashekhar and Jenna Johnson report. "He said he was dismissed from the important prosecutor's job in Manhattan only 22 hours after he finally refused to take a call from the president. Bharara told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week that Comey's account 'felt a little bit like deja vu.' 'And I'm not the FBI director,' he said, 'but I was the chief federal law enforcement officer in Manhattan with jurisdiction over a lot of things including, you know, business interests and other things in New York.' (Bharara's jurisdiction included the headquarters of the Trump Organization.) . . . Trump indicated he would keep him on in November during a meeting at Trump Tower."

Was Sessions briefed about Bharara's concerns by his chief of staff? Did he speak with Trump about them? Was this a factor in Trump firing all the U.S. attorneys?

• Mark Corallo, the spokesman for Trump personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, criticized Bharara on Twitter Sunday:

Does Sessions agree with Corallo that it's proper for the president to reach out directly to a U.S. attorney? Has the Justice Department changed its policy to allow this?

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