Sessions’s lawyer, Chuck Cooper, said in a statement to NBC News: “The special counsel’s Office has informed me that after interviewing the attorney general and conducting additional investigation, the attorney general is not under investigation for false statements or perjury in his confirmation hearing testimony and related written submissions to Congress.”
Sessions testified during his congressional confirmation hearing in January 2017 that he had not met with Russians during his time as a Trump campaign surrogate. It later surfaced that Sessions met with the then-Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, several times during the campaign, prompting Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and then-Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to refer a perjury inquiry to the FBI, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News. After media reports about the meetings, Sessions testified before Congress that his meetings were in his capacity as a senator, or were too insignificant to remember.