Attorney General Jeff Sessions joked about connections to Russia before speaking at the Federalist Society convention.

“Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room?” Sessions asked the conservative group. “Before I get started here. Any Russians? Anybody been to Russia? Got a cousin in Russia or something?”

Guests at the convention laughed and applauded Sessions’s jokes, which were not in the official transcript of his speech.

Sessions’s reported meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, have been under scrutiny throughout the investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.