WASHINGTON _ A White House lawyer reached out to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at President Donald Trump's urging in an effort to convince then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation found.
Whether McConnell in turn reached out to his former fellow Republican senator is unknown. McConnell said in two appearances in Kentucky that he was still reviewing the report and his office said it had nothing to add.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, appears once in the redacted version of the report released Thursday. He is named in the section detailing Trump's efforts on March 2, 2017, to repeatedly direct then-White House counsel Don McGahn to convince Sessions _ a former Alabama senator who served with McConnell for years _ not to remove himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.
