When Democrat politicians decide they're going to run with a narrative, it has nothing to do with whether the narrative is true. It only has to do with whether they can sell it. The average person doesn't know the legal definition of perjury. The average person who shares news links on social media doesn't know either. If you repeat it enough and you convince these people that something happened, you've got a shot at winning the perception game and it may as well have happened.
So when they run around suggesting that Jeff Sessions committed perjury in his confirmation hearings, they know he didn't. They don't care. It's not as if the media are going to "fact check" them, because the media are helping to sell the narrative too. The only thing that matters is their ability to sell the narrative to enough of the public.
But if you know what perjury actually is - giving willfully false testimony under oath - you know it's 100 percent that Sessions did not do that in his exchange with Sen. Al Franken about contact with the Russians.
National Review's Andrew McCarthy, who is our favorite former U.S. Attorney, explains:
On the overwrought, partisan allegations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions committed perjury in his confirmation-hearing testimony, let’s cut to the chase: There is a good deal of political hay to be made because Sessions made a statement that was inaccurate — or at least incomplete — especially when mined out of its context. But the claim that his testimony was perjurious as a matter of law is wholly without merit.
Perjury is not inaccuracy. It must be willfully false testimony. Willfulness is the criminal law’s most demanding mens rea (state of mind) requirement. Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the speaker knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally — not by accident, misunderstanding, or confusion — said something that was untrue, with a specific purpose to disobey or disregard the law. Therefore, when there is an allegation of perjury, the alleged false statements must be considered in context. Any ambiguity is construed in favor of innocence. If there is potential misunderstanding, the lack of clarity is deemed the fault of the questioner, not the accused.
Context is so important here
The reason context is so important here is that Franken's line of questioning was all about the Trump campaign collaborating with the Russians in an attempt to influence the election. When Franken asked Sessions about any campaign officials, or surrogates (a much less precise term), or himself having contact with the Russians, it would have been extraordinarily thorough for Sessions to mention his contact with the Russians in the course of his work as a senator, precisely because the entire context of the discussion had nothing to do with his work as a senator.
That's why it's so clear and obvious that there was no willful attempt to give a false answer. It's like if someone was asking me what I write about for this web site, and I explained: "How awful Hillary is, getting rid of ObamaCare, how awful the media are, changing the tax code . . ." and the questioner asked, "How about demons attacking a baseball team?"
Nope. Never done that one.
But wait! I have! In my book Backstop! That's true but we weren't talking about my books. We were talking about my columns for Herman's site.
See? The answer I gave wasn't totally complete or accurate, but it made sense given the context of the conversation It clearly wasn't designed to mislead the questioner.
Support Canada Free Press
This is all about selling a narrative, and they're in on it too
When Sessions told Franken he'd had no contact with the Russians, it made sense given the context of the discussion that he meant no contact on behalf of the Trump campaign, or for the purpose of collaborating with the Russians to defeat Hillary. That would have been the most reasonable meaning by which Franken and others should have understood the answer.
And McCarthy explains that when an answer is not entirely clear or accurate, the first responsibility lies with the questioner and whether the question was clear enough to have produced the right kind of answer. So if Franken wanted Sessions to talk about all contacts with the Russians, including those that happened in the context of his work as a senator, he would have needed to specifically indicate that.
He didn't, and given the course of the questioning, there was no reason Sessions would have assumed he was interested in those contacts - since they were a normal part of his job on the Senate Armed Services Committee and had nothing to do with the Trump campaign.
So no, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer don't really think Sessions committed perjury. They know he didn't. They're lying. But don't expect the Times and the Post to screech about their lies like they do every other minute with President Trump. This is all about selling a narrative, and they're in on it too.
