United States Congress(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s pick to become the next attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, has begun making his case to Senate colleagues for why they should confirm his nomination to lead the Justice Department.
Sessions walked into the Senate hearing room Tuesday morning to shouting from some protesters dressed in Ku Klux Klan costumes, and others holding signs saying, “Stand Against Xenophobia” and “Love Trumps Hate.” Sessions seemed unfazed, and many in the room cheered as the protesters were removed.
In his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning, the Alabama senator was expected to vow to tell incoming president Trump “no” when necessary. He will defend police and law enforcement officers across the country who have been “unfairly maligned” in recent years, and he will insist he understands the struggle for justice by “African-American brothers and sisters” and from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, Sessions was expected to promise, according to prepared remarks.
In the hours ahead Tuesday, Sessions is sure to face tough questions over his record on civil rights and his plan for cooling tensions between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
“The Department of Justice must never falter in its obligation to protect the civil rights of every American, particularly those who are most vulnerable,” Sessions was expected to tell Senators in his opening remarks.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Sessions’ 20 years in the Senate mean, “We know him well.”
“He is a man of honor and integrity, dedicated to the faithful and fair enforcement of the law, who knows well and deeply respects the Department of Justice and its role,” Grassley said in his own opening remarks, noting that as U.S. attorney in Alabama during the 1980s, Sessions “oversaw the investigation of Klansman Francis Hays for the brutal abduction and murder of a black teenager, Michael Donald.”
But the top Democrat on the Senate committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, told Sessions before his opening remarks that it’s important for the next attorney general to enforce the law “equally for all Americans,” not to advocate for his own beliefs.
Noting “there is so much fear in this country,” particularly in African-American communities, Feinstein called Session’s record “extremely conservative.”
She said he has taken “deeply concerning” stances, including support for keeping people out of the United States based on their religion, support for “illegal” waterboarding of terrorism suspect, and opposition to gay-rights legislation.
Feinstein also cited Trump’s promise on the campaign trail that his attorney general would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton.
“That’s not what an attorney general does,” Feinstein said. “The attorney general does not investigate or prosecute at the direction of the president.”
Sessions has faced additional criticism from top Democrats and some civil rights groups over decades-old allegations that he made racist remarks when he was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama. Critics have also expressed concerns that Sessions assailed the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, and he opposed the Matthew Shepard Act, expanding the definition of “hate crimes” to include attacks on people based on their sexual orientation, gender or disability.
“I deeply understand the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters. I have witnessed it,” he will say in his opening remarks. “I understand the demands for justice and fairness made by the LGBT community.”
One of Session’s fellow senators, Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, is planning to testify Wednesday — in a second day of testimony — against Sessions’ nomination. A sitting U.S. senator has never before testified against another sitting senator’s nomination to join the Presidential Cabinet, according to Booker’s office.
“I do not take lightly the decision to testify against a Senate colleague,” Booker said in a statement. “But the immense powers of the Attorney General combined with the deeply troubling views of this nominee is a call to conscience. Senator Sessions’ decades-long record is concerning in a number of ways, from his opposition to bipartisan criminal justice reform to his views on bipartisan drug policy reform, from his efforts earlier in his career to deny citizens voting rights to his criticism of the Voting Rights Act, from his failure to defend the civil rights of women, minorities, and LGBT Americans to his opposition to common sense, bipartisan immigration reform.”
Much of Session’s opening remarks Tuesday were expected to focus on the “heroin epidemic” across America and the jump in violent crime in certain U.S. cities, including record-setting murders and shootings in Chicago last year.
“These trends cannot continue,” he will say. “It is a fundamental civil right to be safe in your home and your community … It will be my priority to confront these crises vigorously, effectively, and immediately.”
At the same time, Sessions will vow to support state and local law enforcement across the country, calling recent attacks on police in the line of duty “a wake-up call.”
“In the last several years, law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the actions of a few bad actors and for allegations about police that were not true,” he will say. “If we are to be more effective in dealing with rising crime, we will have to rely heavily on local law enforcement to lead the way. To do that, they must know that they are supported. If I am so fortunate as to be confirmed as attorney general, they can be assured that they will have my support.”
Booker is hardly the only Democrat to oppose Session’s nomination. Like Booker, many Democrats have expressed concern over testimony during Session’s confirmation hearing for a federal judgeship in 1986, when some accused Sessions of calling a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” and dubbed some actions by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “un-American.”
“After four days of hearings and extensive testimony, Jeff Sessions’ nomination was rejected by a Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. He was too extreme for Republicans in 1986,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, wrote in the Boston Globe Sunday. “Now that he is nominated to be attorney general, we will see if the same person is still too extreme for Republicans.”
Leahy, until recently the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said “Sessions has repeatedly stood in the way of efforts to promote and protect Americans’ civil rights.”
“He did so even as other members of the Republican Party sought to work across the aisle to advance the cause of living up to our nation’s core values of equality and justice,” Leahy wrote. “If we are to continue being a great nation, then survivors of sexual assault and hate crimes and religious bigotry all deserve to know that their civil and human rights will be protected by the attorney general of the United States. Given the divisive rhetoric of the Republican nominee for president last year, many are worried.”
Sessions, meanwhile, will insist that politics will play no role in his Justice Department.
“The Office of the Attorney General of the United States is not a political position, and anyone who holds it must have total fidelity to the laws and the Constitution of the United States,” Sessions was expected to say Tuesday.
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