Does everyone remember when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was outraged beyond all outrage that anyone would DARE to say he talked to Russians or even had any conversations about Russia during the 2016 campaign?

We've clipped the video where Sessions pulls himself up to his full height of four feet tall or so and in high dudgeon, declares:

Let me state this clearly: I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, at least some of you, and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor for over 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie.

HOW DARE ANYONE SAY SUCH A THING?

Well, apparently Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III himself is now saying it!

Suddenly he remembers giving a thumbs-down to a Russia trip during the campaign! This, after he "remembered" meeting with Sergei Kislyak, though certainly NOT as a campaign surrogate. (And if you believe this, well...don't.)

Senator Al Franken is all over this, Senate comity be damned. In an 8-page letter to Sessions (PDF), Franken grills him about several moments where he could have either had conversations with Russians, conversations about Russians, or conversations with Russians, or basically just lay out every time he lied to the committee and Senator Franken.

Franken's letter in itself makes the case for Sessions' perjury. Each and every time he has, with great aplomb, insisted he didn't have any knowledge of or conversations about colluding with Russians, he has lied.

But it is that meeting, the one with Papadopoulis, Trump, Sessions and other campaign advisors (including Sam Clovis, who has now withdrawn from his USDA nomination) that shows Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to be the liar and perjurer that he is.

It is that same meeting which Trump's campaign blasted out to Instagram as evidence that he was a Very Serious Candidate With Very Serious Foreign Policy Chops.

It is in that meeting where Papadopoulis proposed that Trump meet with Putin. It is that meeting where Sessions stepped on the idea, not only saying it was not something they should do, but something "which they should never speak of again."

He was emphatic. It's a moment you'd think he would remember. Yet he couldn't pull that out of his memory long enough to testify truthfully before the Senate, even in a situation where he could have painted himself as a white knight, saving a dumb campaign aide from taking the candidate down a dumb, dark and dangerous road.

Why lie about it that way? That is the question, isn't it? I'm sure it's a question Robert Mueller may be asking, too.

UPDATE: Apparently, Sessions himself is asking the question, because now he's not sure he remembers nixing the Putin meeting!