Kamala Harris questioning cut off for second week in a row

For the second week in a row, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was cut off from her questioning of a witness at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

The first time was last week as she questioned Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

On Tuesday, it was as she asked questions to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Harris had been asking whether Sessions had reviewed any written rule giving him permission to refuse to answer questions without invoking executive privilege, which Sessions had done throughout the hearing.

Sessions claimed he could refuse to answer questions the president may later exert privilege upon.

Sessions declined to answer Harris’s question as she pushed for a yes or no answer as to whether he had reviewed a policy or rule that was in writing.

“You knew that you would be asked these questions when you relied on that policy,” Harris interjected. “Did you not ask your staff to see the rule that would be the basis of your refusing to answer…”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) then objected, saying Harris was not allowing Sessions to answer the question.

“Chairman, the witness should be allowed to answer the question,” McCain said.

As Sessions chuckled at the commotion, Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said he would run his own committee but instructed Harris to allow Sessions to answer.

Sessions then gave a winding answer that exhausted the rest of Harris’s time, and he did not answer whether he had seen a written rule.

Harris later criticized Sessions’s remarks on Twitter.

It was a simple question. Can Sessions point to the policy, in writing, that allows him to not answer a whole host of our questions today.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 13, 2017