#go bobby threesticks go!

[fraggie-doodles19]

WASHINGTON — President Trump over the summer repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to a half dozen lawmakers and aides. Mr. Trump’s requests were a highly unusual intervention from a president into a legislative inquiry involving his family and close aides.

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the intelligence committee chairman, said in an interview this week that Mr. Trump told him that he was eager to see an investigation that has overshadowed much of the first year of his presidency come to an end.

“It was something along the lines of, ‘I hope you can conclude this as quickly as possible,’” Mr. Burr said. He said he replied to Mr. Trump that “when we have exhausted everybody we need to talk to, we will finish.”

In addition, according to lawmakers and aides, Mr. Trump told Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and a member of the intelligence committee, to end the investigation swiftly.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is a former chairwoman of the intelligence committee, said in an interview this week that Mr. Trump’s requests were “inappropriate” and represented a breach of the separation of powers.

“It is pressure that should never be brought to bear by an official when the legislative branch is in the process of an investigation,” Ms. Feinstein said.

Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said on Thursday that the president had not acted improperly. Mr. Trump, he said, “at no point has attempted to apply undue influence on committee members’’ and believes “there is no evidence of collusion and these investigations must come to a fair and appropriate completion.’’

Mr. Trump’s requests of lawmakers to end the Senate investigation came during a period in the summer when the president was particularly consumed with Russia and openly raging at his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from any inquiries into Russian meddling in the election. Mr. Trump often vented to his own aides and even declared his innocence to virtual strangers he came across on his New Jersey golf course.

In this same period, the president complained frequently to Mr. McConnell about not doing enough to bring the investigation to an end, a Republican official close to the leader said.

Republicans played down Mr. Trump’s appeals, describing them as the actions of a political newcomer unfamiliar with what is appropriate presidential conduct.

Mr. Burr said he did not feel pressured by the president’s appeal, portraying it as the action of someone who has “never been in government.” But he acknowledged other members of his committee have had similar discussions with Mr. Trump. “Everybody has promptly shared any conversations that they’ve had,” Mr. Burr said.

One of them was Mr. Blunt, who was flying on Air Force One with Mr. Trump to Springfield, Mo., in August when he found himself being lobbied by the president “to wrap up this investigation,” according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Blunt was not bothered by Mr. Trump’s comments, the official said, because he did not see them bearing a “sinister motive.’’

But Mr. Burr and Mr. Blunt have both taken steps to limit their interaction with Mr. Trump this year, not wanting to create the perception of coziness as they conduct a highly sensitive investigation into contacts between the president’s campaign and Moscow last year.

Robert S. Mueller III, the Justice Department’s special counsel who is leading a separate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, is also examining whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice when he fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director who was running a federal inquiry into the matter.

Mr. Trump also called other lawmakers over the summer with requests that they push Mr. Burr to finish the inquiry, according to a Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss his contact with the president.

This senator, who was alarmed upon hearing word of the president’s pleas, said Mr. Trump’s request to the other senators was clear: They should urge Mr. Burr to bring the Russia investigation to a close. The senator declined to reveal which colleagues Mr. Trump had contacted with the request.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers feared he would move to fire Mr. Mueller, an option that the president pointedly left open in an Oval Office interview with The New York Times in July.

During this time, Mr. Trump made several calls to senators without senior staff present, according to one West Wing official. According to senators and other Republicans familiar with the conversations, Mr. Trump would begin the talks on a different topic but eventually drift toward the Russia investigation.

In conversations with Mr. McConnell and Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Trump voiced sharp anger that congressional Republicans were not helping lift the cloud of suspicion over Russia, the senators told political allies. The Times reported in August that the president had complained to Mr. McConnell that he was failing to shield Mr. Trump from an ongoing Senate inquiry.

The earlier call with Mr. Burr, however, was perhaps the most invasive, given Mr. Burr’s role directly supervising the Senate’s investigation of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Burr told other senators that Mr. Trump had stressed that it was time to “move on” from the Russia issue, using that language repeatedly, according to people who spoke with Mr. Burr over the summer. One Republican close to Mr. Burr, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Trump had been “very forceful.”

Asked why Mr. Trump is so irritated with the investigation, Mr. Burr said: “In his world it hampers his ability to project the strength he needs to convey on foreign policy.”

Mr. Burr said Mr. Trump was not fully aware of the impropriety of his request because the president still has the mind-set of a businessman rather than a politician. 

“Businessmen are paid to skip things that they think they can skip and get away with,” he said.

This past summer, Mr. Trump also contacted Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who in August introduced a bipartisan bill limiting the president’s power to dismiss special prosecutors — a measure widely seen as aimed at protecting Mr. Mueller from Mr. Trump. 

In an interview this week, Mr. Tillis said the president “just asked me where my head was” on the legislation and described the exchange as “pleasant.” Mr. Trump did not press him on the Senate investigation, said Mr. Tillis, who is not on the intelligence committee.

Republicans said Mr. Trump’s ire often went beyond the intelligence committee investigation and spilled over a range of issues that touched on Russia and his relationship with Congress.

Another Republican senator said Mr. Trump had not urged him to help bring the Russia inquiry to a halt. Instead, the senator said, the president nudged him to begin an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s connection with the intelligence-gathering firm Fusion GPS, which produced a dossier of allegations about Mr. Trump’s ties to Moscow.

Mr. McConnell — who over the summer was quickly notified of Mr. Trump’s calls to his Senate colleagues — told multiple associates that Mr. Trump appeared unable to distinguish traditional policy concerns about Russia from more specific questions about Russian interference in the presidential race.

The Senate leader told associates that Mr. Trump did not seem to recognize that the Republican Party traditionally took a suspicious view of Russia, or that lawmakers could favor punishing Russia without questioning Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016. 

The president had reluctantly signed a bill imposing sanctions on Moscow on Aug. 2, using an extraordinary written statement to lash out against what he viewed as a usurping of executive authority from a Congress that “could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking.”

Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell told associates, appeared inclined to treat criticism of Russian meddling in the United States as giving credence to unproven allegations that his campaign colluded with foreign actors.

In that respect, Mr. Trump’s private consternation mirrored some of his public complaints about the Russia issue. He has continued to seethe regularly, and openly, about the scrutiny of Russia’s political activities, tweeting just last weekend: “Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia, Russia.”

[fraggie-doodles19]

WASHINGTON — A senior Russian official who claimed to be acting at the behest of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried in May 2016 to arrange a meeting between Mr. Putin and Donald J. Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The news of this reached the Trump campaign in a very circuitous way. An advocate for Christian causes emailed campaign aides saying that Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank who has been linked both to Russia’s security services and organized crime, had proposed a meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The subject line of the email, turned over to Senate investigators, read, “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite,” according to one person who has seen the message.

The proposal made its way to the senior levels of the Trump campaign before Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top campaign aide, sent a message to top campaign officials rejecting it, according to two people who have seen Mr. Kushner’s message.

Though the meeting never happened, Mr. Torshin’s request is the latest example of how the Russian government intensified its effort to contact and influence the Trump campaign last year as Mr. Trump was closing in on the Republican presidential nomination.

It came just weeks after a self-described intermediary for the Russian government told a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that the Russians had “dirt” on Mr. Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, in the form of “thousands of emails.”

Soon after Mr. Torshin’s outreach fizzled, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, arranged a meeting at Trump Tower after being told that a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin would bring damaging information about Mrs. Clinton to the meeting.

These contacts were set against the backdrop of a sophisticated effort by Russia to hack Democratic computers, disseminate propaganda and undermine Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. 

The latest disclosure about Mr. Torshin, who is a leading figure in Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, shows the direct involvement of a high-ranking Russian official in the Kremlin’s outreach to the campaign.

The overture to the Trump campaign was first reported by CNN. 

The New York Times confirmed new details, including Mr. Torshin’s involvement and his claim to be acting on Mr. Putin’s behalf. In a letter on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Mr. Kushner of withholding the “backdoor overture” email, an accusation that Mr. Kushner’s lawyers denied.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday, Abbe D. Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Kushner, said that the Senate had asked for all documents related to Mr. Kushner’s contacts with the Russians and that he had responded. “Again, this was not any contact, call or meeting in which Mr. Kushner was involved,” Mr. Lowell said. “He is forwarded this long chain later on.”

A special counsel for the Justice Department is investigating Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 election, and whether any of Donald J. Trump’s associates aided in that effort. The president has repeatedly called the investigation a witch hunt, and as recently as last week, he said he accepted Mr. Putin’s assurances that Russia did not try to meddle in the election.

Mr. Torshin’s proposal is explained in a May 2016 email from Rick Clay, an advocate for conservative Christian causes, to Rick Dearborn, a Trump campaign aide. Mr. Clay was organizing a dinner in Louisville, Ky., honoring wounded veterans, and Mr. Trump was scheduled to be in the city for the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. In the email to Mr. Dearborn, Mr. Clay said he hoped that Mr. Trump would attend the dinner, and he also included details about the overture from Mr. Torshin.

The email said that the dinner would be a chance for Mr. Trump to meet Mr. Torshin, who is a life member of the National Rifle Association in the United States and a vocal advocate for gun rights in Russia, according to three people who have seen the email.

The email said that the Russians believed they had “shared Christian values” with the Trump campaign.

Mr. Torshin has established ties to Russia’s security establishment. He served in the upper house of the Russian Parliament and also sat on the country’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee, a separate government council that includes the director of the Federal Security Service, known as F.S.B., and the ministers of defense, interior and foreign affairs.

Spanish investigators claim Mr. Torshin laundered money for the Russian mob through Spanish banks and properties while he was in Parliament. Mr. Torshin has denied the accusations.

Mr. Clay said in a telephone interview on Friday that while the request seemed “very thin,” he did not think at the time that anyone in the Russian government was trying to interfere with the election. “That never ever, ever, ever entered my mind,” he said. “You look back at it now, and it actually causes you some pause.”

Mr. Clay said he no longer had the email and could not remember its specifics. He recalled that Mr. Torshin and a former assistant, Maria Butina, made the request through a longtime friend, Johnny Yenason, of the Military Warriors Support Foundation, a veterans’ support organization. Mr. Yenason did not respond to messages seeking comment. Efforts to contact Mr. Torshin and Ms. Butina were unsuccessful.

Mr. Dearborn forwarded the email to top campaign aides, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Mr. Kushner, according to two people who have seen the exchange. Mr. Kushner replied that Mr. Dearborn should decline, saying people often claimed to be acting as intermediaries for powerful figures just to gain access to the campaign.

“Pass on this,” Mr. Kushner said, according to Mr. Lowell’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding: “Most likely these people then go back home and claim they have special access to gain importance for themselves. Be careful.”

Mr. Clay said Mr. Dearborn sent him a response rejecting the idea.

“He told me it was inappropriate,” Mr. Clay said. “I agreed with him.”

Neither Mr. Trump nor his campaign officials attended the veterans’ dinner, Mr. Clay said. Donald Trump Jr. attended a separate dinner that night, hosted by the National Rifle Association, that Mr. Torshin also attended. Both dinners were in Louisville.

Senate investigators obtained Mr. Clay’s email as part of their inquiry into Russian election meddling. On Thursday, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Mr. Kushner should have provided the email and other materials to the committee but did not. The Senate Intelligence Committee also did not receive the email from Mr. Kushner.

Mr. Torshin is ardently pro-Trump, and on numerous occasions since 2015 has posted Twitter messages about the president. 

In a post in February 2016, Mr. Torshin wrote: “Maria Butina is now in the USA. She writes to me that D. Trump (NRA member) really is for cooperation with Russia.”

A month later, he wrote, “Trump is a real man,” and included a link to a video clip posted by BuzzFeed of Mr. Trump fist-bumping Marco Rubio during a Republican presidential debate.

[fraggie-doodles19]

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee has uncovered evidence that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was forwarded a document about a “Russian backdoor overture” that Mr. Kushner failed to hand over to the panel’s investigators, according to a letter that the committee released on Thursday.

The Senate letter did not say what type of back channel communication the Russians were trying to set up. But it noted that “other parties have produced documents concerning the matter.”

Mr. Kushner also failed to provide investigators with a September 2016 email he was sent about WikiLeaks, nor did he hand over other communications with a Russian-born businessman that were forwarded him, according to the letter. The businessman, Sergei Millian, a former head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, has long claimed to have ties to Mr. Trump and his associates — ties that Mr. Trump’s advisers have said are overstated.

WikiLeaks has been identified by American intelligence agencies as acting as a conduit for information that Russian intelligence operatives had stolen from Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, had repeated communications with the anti-secrecy group on Twitter.

The Senate panel said that Mr. Kushner has also not produced phone records that investigators believe exist, although the letter gave no specifics about the records. The letter was signed by Senators Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, the two senior members of the Judiciary Committee.

“We appreciate your voluntary cooperation with the committee’s investigation, but the production appears to have been incomplete,” said the letter, which was sent to Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell.

“It appears that your search may have overlooked several documents,” it stated.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Lowell said that Mr. Kushner had responded to all of the committee’s requests.

“We provided the Judiciary Committee with all relevant documents that had to do with Mr. Kushner’s calls, contacts or meetings with Russians during the campaign and transition, which was the request,” Mr. Lowell said. “We also informed the committee we will be open to responding to any additional requests and that we will continue to work with White House Counsel for any responsive documents from after the inauguration.”

Over the summer, Mr. Grassley and Ms. Feinstein said they intended to conduct a bipartisan inquiry into how the Justice Department and F.B.I. handled the investigations into Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia, as well as into the firing of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.

After sending initial requests for information to the president’s associates and conducting interviews — including a closed-door interview with Donald Trump Jr. — tension arose between Republican and Democrat investigators about who should be questioned and what documents should be sought.

The Senate letter also pressed Mr. Lowell on why he has refused to hand over a copy of a government document that Mr. Kushner completed to obtain a security clearance. The document Mr. Kushner submitted — known as an SF-86 — has been amended at least twice, after he failed to disclose meetings he had with foreign leaders, including numerous Russians.

Among the meetings that Mr. Kushner did not initially disclose was a June 2016 gathering at Trump Tower that included Donald Trump Jr., Paul J. Manafort, then the campaign chairman, and Russians who had promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

“You declined to produce documents requested from the committee from your SF-86, on the basis that the documents are confidential and have been submitted to the F.B.I. for its review,” the letter stated. “However, if Mr. Kushner or his counsel retained copies of the forms, you should produce them.”

[fraggie-doodles19]

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, showed selective recall on the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts.

• Mr. Sessions said he had “no reason to doubt these women” who have accused the man who wants his old Senate seat, Roy S. Moore, of seeking sexual or romantic favors from them as teenagers.

• Mr. Sessions was asked about his direction that the department consider a special counsel to investigate Mr. Trump’s political opponents, including Hillary Clinton.

Sessions: I don’t recall Russia reports, but I shot down Trump-Putin meeting.

Mr. Sessions denied that he lied in October when he testified that he knew of nobody in the Trump campaign who had contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign. “And I don’t believe it happened,” he said.

Court records later revealed that Mr. Sessions led a March 2016 meeting in which George Papadopoulos, a campaign aide, discussed his Russian ties and suggested setting up a meeting between Mr. Trump. and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president.

“I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports,” Mr. Sessions said.

Mr. Sessions testified Tuesday that was still hazy on the details about what Mr. Papadopoulos had proposed.

But on one matter, he said his memory is clear: he said he shot down Mr. Papadopoulos’ idea of a Trump-Putin meeting. And he said he told Mr. Papadopoulos that he was not authorized to represent the campaign in such discussions.

To sum up: Mr. Sessions said he could not remember much about Russian influence on the Trump campaign, except when he could block such influence.

Applying the Sessions standard on perjury to … Jeff Sessions.

As Democrats repeatedly put heat on Mr. Sessions over the evolution of his testimony before Congress, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, invoked an unexpected ostensible ally: Senator Jeff Sessions.

Holding up a speech he said Mr. Sessions had given on the Senate floor during the proceedings to remove President Bill Clinton from office, Mr. Jeffries said Mr. Sessions had then justified his vote for removal by saying that he would not hold the president to a different standard than a young police officer he had prosecuted years before for lying under oath.

“You stated that you refused to hold a president accountable to a different standard than the young police officer who you prosecuted,” Mr. Jeffries said. “Let me be clear: The attorney general of the United States of America should not be held to a different standard than the young police officer whose life you ruined by prosecuting him for perjury.”

Mr. Sessions vehemently disagreed with the comparison, repeatedly calling Mr. Jeffries suggestion “unfair.”

“Mr. Jeffries, nobody, nobody, not you or anyone else should be prosecuted, not be accused of perjury for answering the question the way I did in this hearing,” Mr. Sessions said. “I have always tried to answer the questions fairly and accurately.”

Sessions says he is plugging the leaks.

Several Republican lawmakers urged Mr. Sessions to crack down on leaks. Republicans have generally responded to various Trump-Russia revelations — like the Washington Post report disclosing that a wiretap of the Russian ambassador had picked up his conversations about sanctions with Michael Flynn, then Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — by saying the real scandal was the leaks.

Mr. Sessions told Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the committee, that the leaking of classified information was “a very grave offense.” He also said touted a significant increase in the number of open leak investigations.

“We had about nine open investigations of classified leaks in the last three years; we have 27 investigations open today,” Mr. Sessions said. “We intend to get to the bottom of these leaks. I think it has reached epidemic proportions. It cannot be allowed to continue and we will do our best effort to ensure it does not continue.”

In August, Mr. Sessions had told reporters that the Justice Department was pursuing three times the number of leak investigations as were open at the end of the Obama administration, but he had declined then to say what the specific numbers were.

(The numbers were also complicated by the fact that the department’s method of tracking such cases conflates leaks to the news media with other types of unauthorized disclosures, like foreign espionage. Mr. Sessions said in August, and again on Tuesday, that there have been four such indictments this year, but only one of those — the charging of Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor working for the N.S.A., with sending an intelligence report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept — is a classic news media leak case.)

Later, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, brought up Mr. Trump’s accusation that the press is the “enemy of the people,” said the Founders thought the free press was society’s best friend, and asked Mr. Sessions to commit to not prosecuting “investigative journalists for maintaining the confidentiality of their professional sources.”

(That question garbled or conflated two different issues. One is whether journalists could be jailed for contempt if they refuse to provide witness testimony when subpoenaed in connection with an investigation into or prosecution of their suspected sources. The other is whether journalists could be prosecuted as alleged co-conspirators in a criminal leak.)

“I’ll commit to respecting the role of the press and conducting my office in a way that respects that,” Mr. Sessions responded. “We have not had a conflict in my term in office yet with the press but there are some things the press seems to think they have an absolute right to.” but it does not, he added.

He offered no further details about where he draws the line.

A Republican-Sessions divide on government surveillance.

While the Trump campaign contacts with Russia is the main recurring theme, a separate subplot has emerged: surveillance.

The statute by which Congress legalized the Bush administration’s post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, is set to expire at the end of 2017 if lawmakers do not extend it.

The current law permits the government to collect from American internet companies, without a warrant, the messages of foreigners abroad who have been targeted for intelligence purposes — even when they are communicating with an American. Leaders from both parties on the House Judiciary Committee have agreed to push a bill, dubbed the USA Liberty Act, that would impose some new limitations on the surveillance program as a condition of extending it.

The Liberty Act would require government agents to obtain a warrant from a judge to scrutinize such messages when the information pertains to Americans connected to a criminal investigation, though not when it comes to a national-security investigation. The Trump administration opposes that idea.

Among others, Rep. Ted Poe, Republican of Texas, pressed Mr. Sessions about that issue. Invoking the language of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, he noted that the information in the internet repository was seized without a warrant, and said querying the database amounts to a search. He demanded, “you don’t think probable cause and a warrant is required to go into that information?”

Mr. Sessions replied that the federal courts “have so held,” adding “I agree with the courts, not you, congressman, on that.”

In fact, while it is true that several judges have upheld the use of evidence derived from the program in terrorism-related cases; the issue of whether evidence derived from it may be used in ordinary criminal cases — the type the Liberty Act proposal addresses — has not been adjudicated.

Mr. Poe responded: “It is the responsibility of Congress to set the privacy standard for Americans.”

The Constitution supports the view that the government should get a warrant before it searches through internet databases without a warrant, he said. Otherwise, “that is spying on Americans.”

Sessions abandons fellow Alabamian Roy Moore.

Mr. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee, “I have no reason to doubt these women” who have accused Roy S. Moore of seeking sex or romance with them when they were teenagers.

Mr. Moore is seeking to fill the Alabama Senate seat that Mr. Sessions gave up when he was confirmed as attorney general. And Mr. Sessions remains a popular figure in Alabama. The attorney general’s views matter in his home state.

What’s more, Republican leaders in Washington are discussing whether Mr. Sessions should launch a write-in campaign to reclaim his seat. If that does not happen and Mr. Moore prevails in the Dec. 12 special election, there is talk of expelling the jurist from the Senate and prevailing on Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, to appoint Mr. Sessions back to the Senate.

The twin hearings: Russia — and anything but Russia.

Mr. Sessions’ appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday was really a twofer. There was the hearing on the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, guided by the committee’s Democrats who single-mindedly bored in on the topic.

Then there was the hearing-on-any-topic-other-than-Russia orchestrated by the committee’s Republicans, which scurried over federal eavesdropping law, rising crime, immigration and Hillary Clinton.

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, summed up the Republican sentiment.

“I don’t speak Russian and I haven’t met with Russians and I don’t really want to talk about that today,” he said, before diving into questions about sober living homes.

The straight dope on marijuana use among ‘good people’

The Democrats were not exclusively concerned with Russia. During his time with the attorney general, Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, paused the grilling to ask Mr. Sessions about a subject long associated with him: pot. Comedy ensued.

“You said one time that good people don’t smoke marijuana,” Mr. Cohen said. “Which of these people would you say are not good people?”

Mr. Sessions began to explain in earnest, but Mr. Cohen cut him off.

“Quickly. John Kasich, a good person? George Pataki, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Judge Clarence Thomas — which are not good people?” he demanded, citing prominent Republicans who, ostensibly, have admitted smoking dope.

Mr. Sessions, laughing with much of the hearing room, chalked it up to context. “So the question was, what do you do about drug use, the epidemic we’re seeing in the country, and how you reverse it. Part of that is a cultural thing. I explained how when I became the United States attorney in 1981, and the drugs were being used widely, over a period of years, it became unfashionable, unpopular, and people were seeing — it was seen as such that good people didn’t use marijuana.”

And with that, Mr. Cohen’s allotted time for questioning ended.

The White House has its eye on his performance.

The White House was carefully watching Mr. Sessions’s performance. The attorney general has been in hot water with the president since he decided in March to recuse himself from all matters related to Russia, leaving him without control over the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian efforts to meddle in the election.

Representative Robert Goodlatte, the committee’s Republican chairman, appeared to pile on when he said, “While I understand your decision to recuse yourself was an effort by you to do the right thing, I believe you, as a person of integrity, would have been impartial and fair in following the facts wherever they led.”

Any hiccups in Mr. Sessions’s testimony would most likely only make his problems at the White House worse.

And Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat on the panel, did not make things easier for the attorney general when he asked Mr. Sessions if the president should make “public comments that might influence a pending criminal investigation.”

Mr. Sessions hesitated. “He should take great care in those issues,” he said, before adding a defense of Mr. Trump.

“I would say it’s improper,” Mr. Sessions said. “A president cannot improperly influence an investigation. And I have not been improperly influenced and would not be improperly influenced.”

Debate emerges on appointing a second special counsel.

Republicans were pleased that Mr. Sessions came with good news. On Monday, the Justice Department notified the committee that senior prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the Obama administration’s decision to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States. The department will also examine whether any donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to the approval.

Republicans are investigating the matter themselves but have been clamoring for the department to get involved. On Tuesday, Mr. Goodlatte signaled his support but said again that he wanted the department to go farther and appoint a second special counsel. He also urged Mr. Sessions to let a special counsel investigate the Clinton email case.

“There are significant concerns that the partisanship of the F.B.I. and the department has weakened the ability of each to act objectively,” he said.

Democrats were incensed by the letter, which they said they did not receive. Mr. Conyers said the appointment of a new special counsel was merely to “cater to the President’s political needs.” He argued that there was not sufficient evidence to do so. And, he said, it smacked of “a banana republic.”

Mr. Sessions said that any decisions about the investigations would be made “without regard to politics, ideology, or bias.”

Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, pressed Mr. Sessions on a litany of issues that “looks like” they need a special counsel to investigate, the attorney general was brusque: “ ‘Looks like’ is not enough to appoint a special counsel.”

Sessions is in the hot seat over Russia — again.

Mr. Sessions has twice told lawmakers under oath that as a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, he did not communicate with Russians to aid Mr. Trump’s candidacy, nor did he know of other members of the campaign who had.

His challenge on Tuesday will be to try to square those comments with recent revelations that at least one member of the campaign’s foreign policy council, which Mr. Sessions led, and another foreign policy adviser, had informed Mr. Sessions about their discussions with Russians at the time.

Mr. Sessions has already had his statements undercut once. After telling senators at his confirmation hearing in January that he had not had any contacts with Russians, it was revealed that Mr. Sessions held multiple meetings with a Russian ambassador during the campaign.

Now, Mr. Sessions must contend with comments he made last month, in another hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Mr. Sessions told senators when asked whether he believed members of the campaign had communicated with Russians.

Democrats on the committee put Mr. Sessions on alert in a letter last week, saying that they would want clarification on “inconsistencies” between those statements and those of the two campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, who have acknowledged having contact with Russians.

“Under oath, knowing in advance that he would be asked about this subject, the Attorney General gave answers that were, at best, incomplete,” said Mr. Conyers. “I hope the Attorney General can provide some clarification on this problem in his remarks today.”

[fraggie-doodles19]

Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.)

The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to WikiLeaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”

The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between WikiLeaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.

“Over the last several months, we have worked cooperatively with each of the committees and have voluntarily turned over thousands of documents in response to their requests,” said Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Donald Trump Jr. “Putting aside the question as to why or by whom such documents, provided to Congress under promises of confidentiality, have been selectively leaked, we can say with confidence that we have no concerns about these documents and any questions raised about them have been easily answered in the appropriate forum.” WikiLeaks did not respond to requests for comment.

The messages were turned over to Congress as part of that body’s various ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. American intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of engaging in a deliberate effort to boost President Donald Trump’s chances while bringing down his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. That effort—and the president’s response to it—has spawned multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel inquiry that has led to the indictment of Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, for financial crimes.

It’s not clear what investigators will make of the correspondence, which represents a small portion of the thousands of documents Donald Trump Jr.’s lawyer says he turned over to them. The stakes for the Trump family, however, are high. Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with connections to Russia’s powerful prosecutor general, is already reportedly a subject of interest in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, as is the White House statement defending him. (Trump Jr. was emailed an offer of “information that would incriminate Hillary,” and responded in part, “If it’s what you say I love it.”) The messages exchanged with WikiLeaks add a second instance in which Trump Jr. appears eager to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton, despite its provenance.  

Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests. When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

WikiLeaks played a pivotal role in the presidential campaign. In July 2016, on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee's servers that spring. The emails showed DNC officials denigrating Bernie Sanders, renewing tensions on the eve of Clinton’s acceptance of the nomination. On October 7, less than an hour after the Washington Post released the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Wikileaks released emails that hackers had pilfered from the personal email account of Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta.

On October 3, 2016, WikiLeaks wrote again. “Hiya, it’d be great if you guys could comment on/push this story,” WikiLeaks suggested, attaching a quote from then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton about wanting to “just drone” WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

“Already did that earlier today,” Trump Jr. responded an hour-and-a-half later. “It’s amazing what she can get away with.”

Two minutes later, Trump Jr. wrote again, asking, “What’s behind this Wednesday leak I keep reading about?” The day before, Roger Stone, an informal advisor to Donald Trump, had tweeted, “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks.”

WikiLeaks didn’t respond to that message, but on October 12, 2016, the account again messaged Trump Jr. “Hey Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our publications,” WikiLeaks wrote. (At a rally on October 10, Donald Trump had proclaimed, “I love WikiLeaks!”)

“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.”

Trump Jr. did not respond to this message. But just 15 minutes after it was sent, as The Wall Street Journal’s Byron Tau pointed out, Donald Trump himself tweeted, “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”

Two days later, on October 14, 2016, Trump Jr. tweeted out the link WikiLeaks had provided him. “For those who have the time to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy all the @wikileaks emails are right here: http://wlsearch.tk/,” he wrote.

After this point, Trump Jr. ceased to respond to WikiLeaks’s direct messages, but WikiLeaks escalated its requests.

“Hey Don. We have an unusual idea,” WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. “Leak us one or more of your father’s tax returns.” WikiLeaks then laid out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks. One, The New York Times had already published a fragment of Trump’s tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could come out any time “through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC).”

It is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that “is the real kicker.” “If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” WikiLeaks explained. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source.” It then provided an email address and link where the Trump campaign could send the tax returns, and adds, “The same for any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out.”

Trump Jr. did not respond to this message.

WikiLeaks didn’t write again until Election Day, November 8, 2016. “Hi Don if your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do,” WikiLeaks wrote at 6:35pm, when the idea that Clinton would win was still the prevailing conventional wisdom. (As late as 7:00pm that night, FiveThirtyEight, a trusted prognosticator of the election, gave Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning the presidency.) WikiLeaks insisted that contesting the election results would be good for Trump’s rumored plans to start a media network should he lose the presidency. “The discussion can be transformative as it exposes media corruption, primary corruption, PAC corruption, etc.,” WikiLeaks wrote.

Shortly after midnight that day, when it was clear that Trump had beaten all expectations and won the presidency, WikiLeaks sent him a simple message: “Wow.”

Trump Jr. did not respond to these messages either, but WikiLeaks was undeterred. “Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well!” WikiLeaks wrote on December 16 to Trump Jr., who was by then the son of the president-elect. “In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to [Washington,] DC.”

WikiLeaks even imagined how Trump might put it: “‘That’s a real smart tough guy and the most famous australian [sic] you have!’ or something similar,” WikiLeaks wrote. “They won’t do it but it will send the right signals to Australia, UK + Sweden to start following the law and stop bending it to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons.” (On December 7, Assange, proclaiming his innocence, had released his testimony in front of London investigators looking into accusations that he had committed alleged sexual assault.)

In the winter and spring, WikiLeaks went largely silent, only occasionally sending Trump Jr. links. But on July 11, 2017, three days after The New York Times broke the story about Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with connections to Russia’s powerful prosecutor general, WikiLeaks got in touch again.

“Hi Don. Sorry to hear about your problems,” WikiLeaks wrote. “We have an idea that may help a little. We are VERY interested in confidentially obtaining and publishing a copy of the email(s) cited in the New York Times today,” citing a reference in the paper to emails Trump Jr had exchanged with Rob Goldstone, a publicist who had helped set up the meeting. “We think this is strongly in your interest,” WikiLeaks went on. It then reprised many of the same arguments it made in trying to convince Trump Jr. to turn over his father’s tax returns, including the argument that Trump’s enemies in the press were using the emails to spin an unfavorable narrative of the meeting. “Us publishing not only deprives them of this ability but is beautifully confounding.”

The message was sent at 9:29 am on July 11. Trump Jr. did not respond, but just hours later, he posted the emails himself, on his own Twitter feed.