ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Democrats rushed to Twitter on Wednesday in defense of Sen. Elizabeth Warren after Republicans rebuked her on the Senate floor Tuesday night for quoting 30-year-old criticisms of attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, a U.S. senator from Alabama.
The Massachusetts senator had referenced comments that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and the late Coretta Scott King, wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., made in 1986 when Sessions, then a U.S. attorney, was under consideration for a federal judgeship. The GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately blocked his nomination by a 10-8 vote.
Selectively using rules to silence the concerns #CorettaScottKing had about #JeffSessions is offensive, wrong, and diminishes the Senate.
— Senator Ben Cardin (@SenatorCardin) February 8, 2017
.@SenateMajLdr tried to silence Corretta Scott King’s letter abt #Sessions’ civil rights record. We’re making sure she is heard #LetHerSpeak
— Tom Udall (@SenatorTomUdall) February 8, 2017
Quoting King’s letter from the floor Tuesday night, Warren said, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.”
It was that line that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., quoted before calling Warren “to order under the provisions of rule XIX,” arguing that she had “impugned the motives and conduct” of Sessions after being warned and later explaining, “but, nevertheless, she persisted.”
Many Democratic senators were incensed, and they tweeted their outrage on Wednesday.
The incident has directed attention to Coretta Scott King’s 1986 letter, which railed against Sessions’ potential appointment to the federal judgeship. There were allegations at the time that Sessions had made racist remarks as U.S. attorney in Alabama, which he has repeatedly and vehemently denied.
A video of Warren’s reading the video outside the Senate Tuesday after she was kicked out has been viewed more than 7 million times on Facebook and at least three Democratic senators read the letter aloud on the Senate floor this morning while a final vote on his nomination has been scheduled for this evening.
Some of those senators, who were all men, pointed out what they said was a double-standard because Warren was the only one censored.
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