In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Justice Department released Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s SF-86 security-clearance form Thursday that shows he denied having any contact with foreign governments or their representatives “in the past seven (7) years.” Sessions’s spokesman told CNN in May that certain meetings weren’t supposed to be listed.
“In filling out the SF-86 form, the attorney general’s staff consulted with those familiar with the process, as well as the FBI investigator handling the background check, and was instructed not to list meetings with foreign dignitaries and their staff connected with his Senate activities,” Department of Justice spokesman Ian Prior told the network.
As with other Trump administration officials, Sessions’s foreign contacts have drawn scrutiny in recent months. News broke in March that he had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak despite telling the Senate during his January confirmation hearing that he had “no contact with the Russians.”
Although Sessions’s omission was already known, Thursday’s release is the first public display of the form itself, as the Justice Department only disclosed the form after a court ordered it to do so. The heavily redacted security-clearance document, obtained by American Oversight, a group with Democratic Party links, shows Sessions stating that neither he nor his family had “had any contact with a foreign government, its establishment,” or “its representatives” over a period of years.