Schumer and Pelosi’s Attorney General Hypocrisy

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke Thursday about a “knot” in his stomach upon learning that Jeff Sessions had met with Russia’s ambassador last year and called for the attorney general’s resignation.

Short of a resignation, Schumer called for Sessions to recuse himself from an investigation into contacts between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign.

“The information reported last night makes it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Attorney General Sessions cannot possibly lead an investigation into Russian interference in our elections or come anywhere near it.”

“The information reported last night makes it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Attorney General Sessions cannot possibly lead an investigation into Russian interference in our elections or come anywhere near it,” he said during a news conference on Capitol Hill. “With these revelations, he may very well become the subject of it.”

But Schumer was much more willing to give the previous attorney general the benefit of the doubt. Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately on an airport tarmac with former President Bill Clinton, whose wife just happened to be under FBI investigation for her handling of classified information.

After news broke in June, there were no calls by Schumer for resignation or even recusal. Instead, he rushed to her defense.

[lz_third_party align=center includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jb2gj1Ojwg”]

“She’s an honorable person,” he told reporters at the time. “She has said that nothing was discussed related to the investigation. So you have two choices — to say this didn’t matter, or she’s lying. I think it didn’t matter. I don’t think she’s lying.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dismissed comparisons between Sessions and Lynch.

“There couldn’t be a starker difference,” she told reporters Thursday. “Attorney General Lynch had a social encounter — serendipitous, some might say, for the former president of the United States to come by, and they discussed their grandchildren. She did not have a major role in the Hillary Clinton campaign. This is completely different.”

Pelosi accused Sessions of perjury, and made clear she considers it a fireable offense. She felt differently when she voted against the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying under oath.

“I remind you that this Congress impeached a president for something so far less, having nothing to do with his duties as president of the United States,” she said Thursday.

Schumer said Russian interference “goes to the very wellspring of our democracy,” adding, “It would be of Alice-and-Wonderland quality if this administration were to sanction [Sessions] to investigate himself.”

Schumer said Sessions should step aside from the investigation and allow the deputy attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor. He also said he wants an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

In addition, he called for Congress to write a new law allowing for an independent counsel to investigate the executive branch. That is remarkable, considering how vehemently Democrats opposed the law when it was used to conduct multiple investigations into the Clinton administration in the 1990s and cheered when the law expired in 1999.

The problem, Schumer now says, is that the previous law was too open-ended and allowed abuses by Whitewater special prosecutor Ken Starr, whose investigation uncovered Clinton’s lie about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinksy. That information led to the impeachment that Pelosi lamented.

“Ken Starr went too far,” Schumer said.

Regardless of whether Sessions committed perjury in the legal sense, Schumer said, he ought to resign anyway.

[lz_related_box id=”346775″]

“The standard for remaining attorney general, and certainly for conducting an investigation, is not just, ‘Did you break the law?’ You have to be above reproach.”

While several Republicans called Thursday for Sessions recuse himself, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters that he should do so only if he become subject of the investigation.

“If he’s not, I don’t seen any purpose or reason for him doing so,” he said.