During Thursday’s edition of Fox & Friends, host Ainsley Earhardt made a case that Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn’t have to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, because collusion isn’t a crime.
The topic came up while hosts of President Trump’s favorite show were discussing a string of tweets Trump posted on Wednesday expressing regret about his choice of Sessions for attorney general.
“The question is, should he have taken that job knowing that anybody involved with the campaign might have to recuse themselves because they are a potential subject of the investigation?” Brian Kilmeade asked.
“He really didn’t have to recuse himself because, A, there was no collusion,” Earhardt said. “If there had been collusion though, it is not illegal, and so he didn’t need to step down.”
None of the hosts took issue with Earhardt’s analysis, which represents a complete misunderstanding of why Sessions recused himself in the first place.
Sessions didn’t recuse himself because of concerns about collusion — he recused himself because he was one of Trump’s most prominent supporters during the campaign, and therefore had a conflict of interest when it came to overseeing an investigation of the Trump campaign.
Concerns about Sessions’ conflict of interest were heightened after The Washington Post reported that Sessions misled senators about his campaign contacts with Russians during his confirmation hearing. Though Sessions claimed during his hearing that he he “did not have communications with the Russians,” less than two months later the Post, citing Justice Department officials, reported that Sessions hadn’t told the truth — he had in fact met with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least twice during the campaign.
That revelation led to Sessions recusing himself from overseeing the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign for possible collusion with Russia. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that shortly after Sessions’ recusal, Trump tried to persuade him to reverse course and un-recuse himself. But Sessions refused, and has been a target of the president’s ire ever since.
During the Fox & Friends discussion, host Pete Hegseth alluded to Sessions’ misleading testimony. But instead of criticizing Sessions for not telling the truth, he tried to raise suspicious about how then-Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) knew to ask Sessions about his campaign contacts with Russians in the first place.
“I wonder how Al Franken found out about that too,” Hegseth said. “Just saying — the whole slow motion of what happened behind the scenes to try to find collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians makes its way into the hands of Al Franken and the New York Times.”
Al Franken did not actually ask Sessions about his contacts with Russian officials. Sessions volunteered his answer.