We are probably never going to hear the last on the real reason why James B. Comey was fired from his role as FBI director on May 9th. Not with President Trump constantly contradicting himself over whether it was Deputy Attorney-General Rosenstein’s recommendation or whether it was because of “this Russia thing”.

However one thing had remained consistent and it was the opinion of both Attorney-General Jeff Sessions and Deputy, Rod Rosenstein. Mr Rosenstein had written in his memo to Donald Trump recommending the sack of then, director Comey that Comey’s conduct of the Hillary Clinton email investigations and his subsequent refusal to admit that he’d been wrong to usurp the powers of the Attorney-General was reason to believe that the director had caused disarray within the Bureau.

Jeff Sessions had agreed with Rosenstein’s assessment of the whole situation in May including the fact that the then director further acted in the wrong when he went back to the Senate to inform them of the re-opening of the investigations into Hillary’s emails.

In Rosenstein’s words:

“Concerning his letter to the Congress on October 28, 2016, the Director cast his decision as a choice between whether he would ‘speak’ about the decision to investigate the newly-discovered email messages or ‘conceal’ it. ‘Conceal’ is a loaded term that misstates the issue. When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicising non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment.”

Sessions raised no objections to this assessment when they both had to advice Donald Trump about firing Comey. In fact, in his opening remarks yesterday, he confirmed this when he said: “I adopted Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein’s points he made in his memorandum and made my recommendation”. However, during yesterday’s testimony, the Attorney-General suddenly backtracked.

Senator Jack Reed confronted him with the inconsistencies in his perceptions of Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal (from July and October when he was on Fox News saying Comey was doing a great job and the problemwas Hillary not him to him agreeing with Rosenstein that Comey was careless).

In response to this, Mr Sessions made a quick U-turn to support Comey to the extent that he may have had an obligation – “a duty to correct” – to notify Congress when new evidence emerged in the probe into Hillary Clinton’s in October, a few weeks before the November elections.

According to the Attorney-General:

“I think in retrospect, as all of us began to look at that clearly and talk about it as respectives of the department of justice, once the director first got involved and embroiled in a public discussion of this investigation which would have been better never to have been discussed publicly, and said he — it was over. Then when he found new evidence that came up, I think he probably was required to tell Congress that it wasn’t over, that new evidence had been developed. It probably would have been better and would have been consistent with the rules of the Department of Justice to never have talked about the investigation to begin with.”

Really Mr Sessions, can you just stick to one plot line? Did he do okay or not?