Department of Justice misses deadline to hand over Jeff Sessions' list of Russia contacts

The Department of Justice missed a court-ordered deadline on Wednesday to provide a list of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' contacts with Russian government operatives, said NPR on Thursday.

On June 12, as part of a lawsuit filed by ethics watchdog group American Oversight, a U.S. District Court judge ordered the department to release a complete list within 30 days, a deadline that passed on Wednesday.

American Oversight is seeking access to a portion of Sessions' Standard Form 86 (SF86) -- the application form for a federal security clearance -- relating to contacts "with any official of the Russian government."

The group's director, Austin Evers, said, "Jeff Sessions is our nation's top law enforcement officer, and it is shocking one of his first acts after being named Attorney General was to mislead his own agency about a matter of national security."

Sessions has repeatedly lied about his meetings with Russian ambassador to the U.S. and purported spymaster Sergey Kislyak.

Evers continued, "The court gave DOJ thirty days to produce Attorney General Sessions's security clearance form, DOJ has already confirmed its contents to the press and Sessions has testified about it to Congress, so there is no good reason to withhold this document from the public."

NPR said, "The Standard Form 86, more commonly called SF86, is a very detailed form required to be filled out for obtaining security clearance for certain government positions. It's the same form presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner has recently had to revise after omitting meetings with Russian officials."