On Tuesday, once again Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions faced a congressional committee hearing to reconcile his previous statements about comments he has made regarding the investigation into the Russian interference into the 2016 election. And once again, he suffered from a sever case of “I can’t recall recall” which is also known as the “Can’t Remember Syndrome” (CRS) but in not PC circles means “Can’t Remember Shit”, and then accusing his inquisitors of lying about his lies.
I lost count of the number of times that Sessions said he couldn’t recall in some form or another. But Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) did the math. Over three committee hearings that AG Sessions testified before, including today, he couldn’t recall or remember in some form over 85 times. That didn’t include the number of times that Sessions had an attack of CRS in later questioning.
This 5 minutes made my day.
Limited to five minutes, Rep. Jeffries didn’t have time to give the rest of AG Sessions October 2016 interview with Lou Dobb’s that took place just before the vice presidential debates but Think Progress has it:
SESSIONS: Lou, that’s the way you lie. That’s the way people do it in court. I’ve seen it many, many times. Well, I don’t remember, but if. And she said 35 times before the FBI interview that she couldn’t remember? If you can remember and you don’t — if you say — and you say, I can’t remember, then that’s as false a perjurious statement as if you flat-out gave a false statement
Then Rep. Jeffries asked this: “Mr. Attorney General, do you still believe that the intentional failure to remember can and constitute a criminal act?”
“If it’s an act to deceive, yes,” Sessions acknowledged.
Also this quote from 1999 that Rep. Jeffries didn’t have time to quote:
About seven years ago when I was still the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, a case came before me. My own city of Mobile had as its chief of police a strong African-American who aggressively worked to reform the office, establish community-based policing, and work to create a new level of discipline. Opposition grew and lawsuits were filed against him. A young police officer, who had been the Chief’s driver, testified in a deposition in a federal lawsuit against the Chief. He stated that the chief of police had ordered him to ‘‘bug’’ the patrol cars of other police officers and that he had a secret tape recording giving him this illegal order to commit a crime. The deposition was released quickly to the newspapers. The city council, police department, and the people were in an uproar. Under careful questioning by an experienced FBI agent, the young officer admitted that he had lied in the deposition regarding the tape recording.
As United States Attorney, it was my decision whether the officer would be prosecuted for his perjury. His counsel argued that he was young, that he did lie but had corrected his false testimony at a later time. He argued that we should decline to prosecute. After reflection and review, I concluded that a sworn police officer who had told a plain lie under oath, even a young officer, should be prosecuted in order to preserve the rule of law and the integrity of the system. Our office prosecuted that case. The officer was convicted, and that conviction was later affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. For me personally, I have concluded that I cannot hold a young police officer to a different and higher standard than the President of the United States.
Rep. Jeffries concluded his time saying this, “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.”
Nailed him. I am in love with Hakeem Jeffries and proud to call him a fellow New Yorker.
Senator Al Frankin (D-MN) had it right, AG sessions either has a terrible memory or he is just not telling the truth.