Attorney-general Jeff Sessions failed to disclose during his confirmation hearings in January that he twice met the Russian ambassador while acting as a close adviser to Donald Trump during last year’s presidential campaign.
Mr Sessions met Sergey Kislyak on September 8 in the then-senator’s private office in the US Capitol building, after having spoken with him briefly two months earlier at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The meetings occurred as Russian officials were mounting an increasingly aggressive effort to interfere with the US election in a bid to aid Mr Trump’s chances of winning, US intelligence agencies concluded this year.