Democrats on Wednesday questioned again whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forthcoming with Congress amid news reports he killed a suggestion by former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos to set up a meeting with Republican candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Jeff Sessions concealed his meetings with Russians, and he had an obligation to be more forthcoming about the meeting that involved Papadopoulos as well," Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Manu Raju on CNN.
"In fact, one of the points of question is whether Papadopoulos in that charging document where there's a reference to a campaign supervisor was, in fact, talking to Jeff Sessions."
Blumenthal queried Sessions at his January confirmation hearing before the Senate panel.
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Raju that his concern was "whether he was being honest and forthright with the committee.
"What does that mean for the highest law enforcement officer in the country?"
According to charging documents unsealed Monday in Russia special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, Papadopoulos suggested in a July 2016 meeting that he should make efforts to connect Trump with Putin.
Trump, who was at the meeting of campaign advisers, "didn't say yes and he didn't say no," an official who was in the room told CNN about the meeting.
The official declined to be more specific.
Papadopoulos, 30, a Trump foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, according to the unsealed documents in Mueller's investigation.
Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation in March, has come under fire repeatedly for not disclosing the full extent of his Russian contacts during last year's campaign.
In fact, he beat back suggestions from Judiciary Committee Democrats last month on whether he was "part of the Russian façade."
"It did hurt me to hear you say I'm part of a façade," Sessions, a former Alabama Republican senator who once sat on the committee, told Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. "I'm not part of a façade."
The Justice Department had not commented late Wednesday on CNN's report.