FINGER- POINTING: Key Dem blasts Sessions, but also misspoke on Russia contacts

Several senators on both sides of the aisle rushed to back Attorney General Jeff Sessions Thursday as he sought to blunt resignation calls from senior Democrats, following revelations he met last year with Russia’s ambassador – a detail omitted from recent congressional testimony.

His defenders say such meetings between senators and diplomats were routine. And Sessions even got an inadvertent boost from Democratic Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who in demanding the AG’s resignation initially claimed she never called or met with Russia’s ambassador — only for tweets to surface indicating she had, at least twice.

Other former colleagues intentionally came to Sessions’ defense, backing the former Alabama senator’s claim he only met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“I’ve met with the Russian ambassador with a group, in my capacity, with a group of other senators,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told CNN. “That’s in my official capacity. That’s nothing. That’s my job.”

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said in a statement that he’d talked to “at least twenty ambassadors in the last six weeks.”

“It would have been very normal for Sessions, as a senator, to have talked to the Russian ambassador without discussing the election,” Blunt said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on MSNBC that he’d met with “six ambassadors in the last five months.” Though he hadn’t met with Kislyak, Cruz said he would do so without reservations.

The statements of support came as other lawmakers — including the two top-ranking Democrats, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer — demanded Sessions’ resignation.

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