Lobbyist for Russian interests says
he attended dinners hosted by Sessions
Richard Burt contradicts Jeff
Sessions’ testimony that he didn’t believe he had contacts with lobbyists
working for Russian interests during Trump’s campaign
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Thursday 15 June 2017 16.32 BST Last modified on Thursday 15
June 2017 18.29 BST
An American lobbyist for Russian interests who helped craft
an important foreign policy speech for Donald Trump has confirmed that he
attended two dinners hosted by Jeff Sessions during the 2016 campaign,
apparently contradicting the attorney general’s sworn testimony given this
week.
Sessions testified under oath on Tuesday that he did not
believe he had any contacts with lobbyists working for Russian interests over
the course of Trump’s campaign. But Richard Burt, a former ambassador to
Germany during the Reagan administration, who has represented Russian interests
in Washington, told the Guardian that he could confirm previous media reports
that stated he had contacts with Sessions at the time.
“I did attend two dinners with groups of former Republican
foreign policy officials and Senator Sessions,” Burt said.
Asked whether Sessions was unfamiliar with Burt’s role as a
lobbyist for Russian interests – a fact that is disclosed in public records –
or had any reason to be confused about the issue, Burt told the Guardian that
he did not know.
Several media reports published before Trump’s election in
November noted that Burt advised then candidate Trump on his first major
foreign policy speech, a role that brought him into contact with Sessions
personally.
Burt, who previously served on the advisory board of Alfa
Capital Partners, a private equity fund where Russia’s Alfa Bank was an
investor and last year was lobbying on behalf of a pipeline company that is now
controlled by Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy conglomerate, first
told Politico in October that he had been invited to two dinners that were
hosted by Sessions last summer, at the height of the presidential campaign.
Sessions, a former senator for Alabama who was chairman of
the Trump campaign’s national security committee, reportedly invited Burt so
that he could discuss issues of national security and foreign policy.
When John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona who is
a frequent critic of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, asked Sessions
in a hearing this week before the Senate intelligence committee about whether
the attorney general had ever had “any contacts with any representative,
including any American lobbyist or agent of any Russian company” during the
2016 campaign, Sessions said he did not.
“I don’t believe so,” Sessions said.
Other outlets, including the New Yorker magazine and
Reuters, also reported last year that Burt had contributed his views to Trump’s
speech. When NPR interviewed Burt in May 2016 about the talk, he said he was
“asked to provide a draft for that speech, and parts of that draft survived
into the final [version]”.
The speech, delivered on 27 April 2016 at the Mayflower
Hotel, was attended by Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and is now at the
heart of new questions about Sessions’ personal dealings with Russian
officials. Sessions recused himself from oversight of the FBI’s investigation
into possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign in March
after it emerged that he held two undisclosed meetings with the Russian
ambassador last year.
In his explosive testimony before Congress earlier this
month, former FBI director James Comey, who was fired by Trump, suggested that
he had known that Sessions would eventually have to recuse himself from the
Russia probe, but declined to explain the details in public.
Questions directed at Sessions by lawmakers days later –
after they had privately been briefed by Comey – suggested it related to a
third alleged encounter with Kislyak that had not been disclosed, this time at
the Mayflower Hotel speech. In his confirmation hearing, Sessions had told
lawmakers under oath that he had never had communication with Russian
officials.
This week, in the latest hearing, Sessions said he may have
“possibly” had an “encounter” with the Russian ambassador during a reception at
the Mayflower, but could not recall any specific conversations.
The speech was hosted by the Center for the National
Interest, a Washington thinktank. Burt sits on the group’s board of directors.
While Burt has not played a central role in the FBI and
congressional investigation, Sessions’ response about his dealings with
American lobbyists – which appears to contradict previous reports that Burt and
Sessions communicated during the campaign – could invite more scrutiny of the
attorney general’s testimony.
It is also possible that Sessions was not fully aware of
Burt’s lobbying history, although Burt’s affiliation with Russian interests is
fairly well known in Washington circles.
The former ambassador is managing director of the Europe and
Eurasia practice at McLarty Associates. In that role, he’s served as a lobbyist
for the New European Pipeline AG, the company behind Nord Stream II. At the
time the work started, Gazprom, the Russian state-owned oil company, owned a
50% stake, but it now owns the entire entity. The pipeline, which is seen as
making Europe more dependent on Russian energy exports, was opposed by the
Obama administration.
Burt also serves on the board of Deutsche Bank’s closed-end
fund group, according to his online biography.
The former ambassador and lobbyist appears to have recently
sought to downplay his role in helping Trump to formulate the Mayflower speech,
telling the Daily Beast earlier this year that he had transmitted his counsel
through a third party intermediary.
In the speech, Trump said an “easing of tensions and
improved relations with Russia – from a position of strength – is possible” and
that “common sense says this cycle of hostility must end”.
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for
comment.
Asked about Burt and the exchange between McCain and
Sessions, Carter Page, another former foreign policy adviser to Trump’s
campaign and a central figure in the Russia investigation, said he found “the
entire line of questioning to be near the pinnacle of witch hunt tactics”.
“In the grand scheme of things, the severe civil rights
abuses by Clinton-Obama-Comey regime carried out against myself and other
supporters of the Trump campaign in their illegal attempts to influence the
2016 election will help clarify how irrelevant all these petty side-questions
are,” he said.
Page added that he was writing a book on his experience and
that he was “still in discussions” with publishers.
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