“I think it’s about time to accept the results, and let’s get on with the business of America,” Sessions said in a speech at Amherst College.
While Congress has the power to oversee investigations of possible wrongdoing by the president, Sessions said he believed lawmakers should accept that the inquiry, led by special counsel Robert Mueller, found insufficient evidence to determine that President Donald Trump or his associates engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia.
The public should rest assured that the investigative process worked as it was intended, Sessions said.
“The process was followed, and a decision has now been rendered,” he said.
Some Democratic lawmakers have called for Trump’s impeachment based on Mueller’s report, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged caution.
During his speech, Sessions, who served as a senator from Alabama before becoming attorney general, also defended his decision in March 2017 to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry. He announced weeks after his confirmation that he would remove himself after it was disclosed that he had failed to report contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
As a member of the Trump administration, Sessions said, he was a potential witness in the inquiry and therefore should not lead it. The decision drew the president’s ire, subjecting Sessions to months of public criticism and private humiliation.
Sessions resigned in November 2018 at Trump’s request.
The Amherst College Republicans invited Sessions to deliver the talk. It drew protests from students and faculty members at Amherst, as well as from nearby schools.
In the opening minutes of Sessions’ speech, about 50 attendees — more than a third of the audience — walked out of the campus chapel where the event was held. Many joined protesters outside, denouncing the policies he helped establish as attorney general as an attack on civil rights and saying that they targeted vulnerable groups.
More than 100 people in total joined the protest.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.