Donald Trump has chosen Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as the 84th Attorney General of the United States.
In 1986, Sessions was nominated to be a judge of the U.S. District Court. Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote to the Senate Judiciary committee to oppose the nomination. Sessions’ nomination failed.1
Sessions became only the second nominee to the federal judiciary in 48 years whose nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary committee.
Accusations of racism have dogged Sessions’ career. His former colleagues testified Sessions used the N- word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “OK, until he learned they smoked marijuana.”2
Sessions was an early supporter of the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and was a major policy adviser to the Trump campaign especially in regard to immigration and national security.
Sessions was a leading congressional opponent of illegal immigration and a proponent of reducing illegal immigration.
Upon the death of Antonin Scalia, Sessions said “The Senate should not confirm a new Supreme Court Justice until a new president is elected.”
More recently, Sessions recused himself from all investigations involving the 2016 presidential campaign after officials from both parties called for it. The outcry came after news broke that then Senator Sessions failed to disclose that he met with a Russian envoy during his confirmation hearings to become attorney general.
by Patrick Gaffney
2 Phillips, A. January 10, 2017. “10 things to know about Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General”. The Washington Post.
