May 17, 2017

Eleven Democratic Senators Call for Investigation of Jeff Sessions’ Role in Comey Firing

They want to know if the attorney general violated his recusal from the Russia investigation.

Evan Vucci/AP

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Eleven Democratic senators on Wednesday asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions violated his pledge to recuse himself from any investigations connected to the 2016 election when he took part in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

In their letter, the senators urged the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, to determine whether Sessions violated his recusal and the rules that govern it. They also requested a timeline of Sessions’ involvement in Comey’s dismissal and an assessment of whether that involvement compromised the ongoing FBI investigations overseen by Comey.

Last week, two senior House Democrats sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein demanding more information about Sessions’ recusal. The strongly worded letter made the case that Sessions had broken his pledge and suggested that his actions may have been illegal and could warrant punishment and possible removal from office.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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