In a notable exchange with Senator Martin Heinrich during Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ducked a series of questions without invoking executive privilege.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin believes that the Attorney General’s reasoning for refusing to answer certain questions was based on a statute that doesn’t exist:

“Well, if you cared most about what Donald Trump‘s involvement was and his — and his motivations were for firing Jim Comey and his views of the Russia investigation, you didn’t learn very much today. Because Attorney General Sessions virtually––refused to answer virtually all questions about his interactions with the president. He did so without formally citing executive privilege, referring to some confidentiality which was apparently of his own invention.”

Toobin believes the White House comes out the winner in that Sessions will now draw the brunt of the criticism for not answering the questions, rather than Trump.

“I think the White House sort of had its cake and ate it too,” Toobin said. “Because they got to shut down any inquiry into what President Trump said or did, but they didn’t have to face the political heat of citing executive privilege.”

Watch above, via CNN.

[featured image via screengrab]

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