******* Official Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III congressional appearance thread 2 ******

[neohippie]

218. I would have asked about

First off Richard Burt, is a paid Russian Lobbyist who met with Sessions more than once and helped formulate the Trump Campaign's Russia policy. So Sessions lied when he said he didn't meet with Russian surrogates today.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...ipeline-229264

But the revelation of Burt’s lobbying activity raises new questions about Russian influence in Trump’s campaign. In August, his campaign chair Paul Manafort resigned amid revelations about his ties to pro-Russian forces in Ukraine and the campaign’s reported role in changing the Republican Party platform to favor Kremlin interests. It also comes as the Trump campaign struggles to maintain a unified message on Russia, with Trump having called Putin a "strong leader" and "a leader, far more than our president has been” while his running mate Mike Pence called Putin "small" and "bullying" in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.

In addition to helping shape Trump’s speech, Burt attended two dinners this summer hosted by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who had been named chairman of Trump’s national security committee. Burt was invited to discuss issues of national security and foreign policy, and wrote white papers for Sessions on the same subjects, according to Burt and another person with knowledge of the situation.

According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, one of the papers was about “key foreign policy themes” and another was about “national security decision-making and structure; relationships between Defense, State, [the National Security Council] and so on and how to sort of think about the transition.” According to a second person with knowledge of the situation, Sessions was “very impressed” with the latter paper. A spokesman for Sessions did not respond to a request for comment.

And Burt's a member in Center for National Interest the group that hosted the Mayflower Hotel event and sent out the invitations

here is a link from their site about that event


https://cftni.org/recent-events/dona...policy-speech/



A closer look at their web site reveals more about their views on US policy.

Next

JD Gordon who worked from Trump's campaign on the very committee that Jeff Sessions chaired has already admitted to talking with the Russians and to being the person who pushed for the RNC Platform change that made their platform more Russian friendly

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7610621.html

Donald Trump appears to have pushed for the Republicans to adopt a pro-Moscow policy over Ukraine just as his senior aides were meeting with Russia’s US Ambassador.

At the Republican National Convention last summer, the party agreed to insert language into its platform that opposed arming or providing Ukraine with weapons to take on pro-Russian rebels. At the time, Mr Trump told an interviewer he “wasn’t involved in it”.

But now, a former adviser to Mr Trump has revealed that the push to change the platform came after the direct intervention of the New York tycoon. Mr Trump had hinted as to his views on Ukraine during a speech in the spring of 2016, where the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, was among the guests.

CNN said that a Republican advisor, JD Gordon, had said the move to push the change in the party’s policy was to make it align with Mr Trump’s personal views.

Mr Gordon previously said that he did not speak publicly at the GOP national security sub-committee meeting, where the amendment was discussed. Originally the policy called for “providing lethal defence weapons” to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed rebels. It was changed to “providing appropriate assistance” to Ukraine.

The broadcaster said that Mr Gordon had now revealed that he and others “advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels because this was in line with Trump's views.”

“Gordon says Trump said at the meeting…that he didn’t want to go to World War Three over Ukraine,” CNN said.

And another story about the RNC


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7616436.html

The adviser, Jeffrey “JD” Gordon, said he spoke to Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in July about Mr Trump’s desire to reset the strategic relationship. He said he knew the Republican nominee was interested in whether the US military might work with Russia to combat Isis in Syria, though such specifics were not brought up.

Mr Gordon was one of several figures, some of them senior people, to have conversations with Mr Kislyak both before and after the election. Jeff Sessions, a former Senator who now serves as Mr Trump’s Attorney General, also spoke with the Russian envoy, as did security adviser Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner and Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.


Two days after the conversation, and one day after the completion of the convention in Cleveland, Wikileaks released thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC)

Yet Sessions who was at the RNC meeting with Gordon, Manafort, Carter Page, and even Kislyak then again Sessions was at the Mayflower Hotel, but he somehow doesn't recall any meetings with Russians, or Russian surrogates, or any campaign meetings that ever talked about Russia the platform change according to his testimony today