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Sessions 'Unfit' To Serve As Attorney General

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Jan 19, 2017 - 6:18:56 PM

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Protestors from CodePink, including co-founder Medea Benjamin take part in a demonstration on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 10, during Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing for Attorney General-designate, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. Photo: AP Wide World Photos

WASHINGTON—In the annals of U.S. history, there has likely never been a nominee to be this country’s chief law enforcement officer who had a more bigoted, decades-long record of racial insensitivity, bias against immigrants, disregard for the rule of law, and hostility to the protection of civil rights than President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for U.S. attorney general.

His name is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. He’s also called Jeff. He is a Republican from Alabama who has served for 20 years in the U.S. Senate. He is named after Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, and Civil War General Pierre Beauregard.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions during confirmation hearing Jan. 10
During his two decades on Capitol Hill, Sen. Sessions has opposed the Voting Rights Act and has a history of making racist comments, including reportedly saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot.” He has opposed legislation that provides a path to citizenship for immigrants, and he questioned if the Constitution guarantees citizenship to everyone born in the United States.

In 1986, Mrs. Coretta Scott King wrote a letter opposing Mr. Sessions for a federal judgeship, writing: “The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago, with clubs and cattle prods.

“…I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream,” Mrs. King wrote. Mr. Sessions was not confirmed for that federal judgeship in 1986, by a Republican-controlled Senate committee over concerns about his history of racist comments.

His two days of hearings in 2017 were repeatedly disrupted by protesters who chanted on the first day: “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist U.S.A.!” During one interruption, protesters wore white, hooded robes and pretended to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The nomination of Sen. Sessions attracted widespread outrage also because he called the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) spoke at Mr. Sessions’ 1986 confirmation hearing.

“Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both Black and White Americans thought was in our past. It’s inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a United States federal judge,” Sen. Kennedy said.

Among those who were a part of the unprecedented opposition to the confirmation of Sen. Sessions this time around were members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

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In this hearing, more than 30 years later, Congress members John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) opposed Sen Sessions’ confirmation, the first time a sitting senator has testified against another senator for a cabinet post during a confirmation hearing.

But the Republican majority which supports the Trump nominee even slighted their Black House and Senate colleagues by scheduling their testimony last. “I want to express my concerns about being made to testify at the very end of the witness panels,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “To have a senator, a House member and a living civil rights legend testify at the end of all of this is the equivalent of being made to go to the back of the bus.”

Opposition to the nomination came from across the spectrum of the civil rights community. “The confirmation of Sen. Sessions would like lead to the undoing of all that I have worked for my entire career,” Attorney Nkechi Taifa told The Final Call.

“Jeff Sessions’ history on voting rights is, simply put, a record of hostility,” Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights said in a statement. “He has referred to the Voting Rights Act as intrusive, and is a supporter of the Supreme Court decision to gut the Act in Shelby County v. Holder.”

“It is more evident than ever that Senator Sessions is attempting to rewrite history,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said in a statement. “Indeed, if he is the civil rights advocate he is trying to portray himself as, he has certainly kept it well-hidden during his 40 years in public life. In fact, throughout his entire career he has stood opposed to the principles of equality that the Office of Attorney General is charged with defending and upholding.”

“Nothing he said today changes his 30-year record of pushing an extreme agenda on a wide range of issues,” Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American way said in a statement after the Senate appearance by Sen. Sessions.

“If anything, his arguments underscore our concerns: his willingness to double down on harsh treatment of DREAMers is deeply disturbing, and the idea that his trumped-up prosecution of voting rights activists in Alabama should be considered a ‘voting rights’ case is Orwellian. Jeff Sessions is unfit to be Attorney General and the Senate should reject his nomination,” Ms. Baker concluded.

During the hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) grilled Sen. Sessions on his acceptance of two awards from organizations known for being anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-Black. In 2014 Sen. Sessions accepted The Annie Taylor Award from an organization the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend.

One group has labeled the Horowitz organization: “The premier financier of anti-Muslim voices and radical ideologies.” Sen. Sessions praised him. “David Horowitz is a man I admire,” Sen. Sessions wrote in an op-ed for Front Page Magazine in December 2003. 

In addition, in 2015: Sen. Sessions received the Center for Security Policy “Keeper of The Flame,” according to the questionnaire Sen. Sessions submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The think tank is led by Frank Gaffney, and has been criticized as “gripped by paranoid fantasies about Muslims destroying the West from within, Gaffney believes that ‘creeping Shariah,’ or Islamic religious law, is a dire threat to American democracy.

“The Center for Security Policy, which presented the award to Sen. Sessions was seen as so Islamophobic that it was banned from participating in CPAC—the Conservative Political Action Conference a gathering of thousands of conservatives each spring in Washington, D.C.,” said the group.