“The Russian ambassador apparently sent a staffer to my office — I did not see him — and asked for a meeting, as so many of the ambassadors were doing.”
That was the recollection of Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, of how a meeting was set up with a Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, in September, near the climax of the presidential campaign.
“We listened to the ambassador, to what his concerns might be,” Mr. Sessions continued in his news conference on Thursday. “It was just normal things. I don’t remember a lot of it.”
But the purpose of that meeting between Sessions, who was then a senator from Alabama, and Mr. Kislyak is now the subject of intense scrutiny since the meeting was revealed this week.