· J. Gerald Hebert testified to Congress about Jeff Sessions in the 1980s. Hebert says Sessions made racist remarks about organizations like the NAACP and ACLU.
· 1.5x. 2.0x. Today Jeff Sessions claims credit for prosecuting a lynching by the Ku Klux Klan as proof that he is not a racist, but an attorney working for …
· Denied Judgeship. After working as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama from 1975-77, Sessions was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as U.S. attorney for the ...
· LaVon Phillips, a 26-year-old African American legal assistant to the Perry County district attorney, testified on Sessions behalf in his 1986 confirmation hearing—explaining that Sessions was justified to bring the case forward.
· Even if that’s the case, Sessions’ current record on race and as a US senator is equally terrifying. Sessions believes the Voting Rights Act of …
A Trump transition official told The Daily Beast that a local judge and investigator, both Democrats, defended Sessions’s role in the prosecution.
Sessions was questioned about the prosecution in 1986, days before Figures spoke to the committee, and told Senator Howell Heflin that he did not obstruct the investigation.
When asked about the suspicions of retaliation by the Times, Sessions said, “I’m sorry people see it that way. It is a matter I would like to see behind me, and I’m sorry to see it come up again.” He claimed he had recused himself from Figures’s case to prevent any conflict.
Sessions was denied confirmation thanks to the allegations of racism and abuse of power, making him the first Reagan appointee not approved by the Senate, and only the second nominee to the district court bench rejected in 49 years.
Barry Kowalski, an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told the committee that he mentioned to Sessions that one difficulty investigators were having getting a clear account of events in the Donald case was that “some of the Klansmen had been smoking marijuana.”.
Hays was tried in Alabama state court because prosecutors wanted him to face the death penalty. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in Alabama’s infamous Yellow Mama electric chair in 1997, the first white man executed for killing a black man in Alabama since 1913, which Sessions noted in his attorney general questionnaire.
Knowles and Hays were both convicted for the murder, with Knowles acting as the prosecution’s chief witness against his fellow Klansman.
His nomination was rejected by a judiciary committee due to concerns over disturbing statements made by Sessions concerning race. He later earned a U.S. Senate seat in 1996, winning three more successive terms over the ensuing years. The first senatorial supporter of Donald Trump for president, Sessions was nominated for U.S. attorney general after Trump's electoral win. Following a wave of Democratic opposition and protests from civil and human rights organizations, Sessions was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate in February 2017. After the midterm elections in November 2018, Sessions resigned at the request of President Trump.
During his confirmation hearing, Sessions defended his record and vehemently denied charges of racism. "This caricature of me from 1986 was not correct," Sessions said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Sessions to resign. "There cannot be even the scintilla of doubt about the impartiality and fairness of the attorney general, the top law enforcement official of the land," Schumer said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Sessions to resign. "There cannot be even the scintilla of doubt about the impartiality and fairness of the attorney general, the top law enforcement official of the land," Schumer said. "Because the Department of Justice should be above reproach, for the good of the country Attorney General Sessions should resign."
Meetings with Russian Ambassador. On March 1, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Sessions had two conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in July and September 2016, when Sessions was a senator. Sessions did not disclose the meetings during his confirmation hearing as attorney general.
One of the most vocal opponents to Sessions' nomination, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, spoke out in the Senate by quoting Edward Kennedy, who had been a member of the Senate Judiciary committee in 1986 and opposed his nomination by President Reagan for a federal judgeship: “He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.” Additionally, Warren began reading a letter from the late Coretta Scott King, who had also opposed Sessions’ 1986 nomination; however, in a controversial move Republican senators silenced her for having “impugned” her senatorial colleague.
In late February 2016, Sessions became the first senator to officially endorse Donald Trump’s run for the U.S. presidency. After Trump won the electoral college and became the 45th U.S. president, he nominated Sessions to become attorney general.
J Gerald Hebert, a former justice department civil rights attorney who worked with Sessions in Alabama, testified to senators that Sessions had dismissed organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the ACLU as “un-American” and suggested a white civil rights attorney was a race traitor for taking on a voting rights case in Alabama during the 1980s.
Jeff Sessions, a law-and-order Alabama conservative loathed by civil rights activists, is due to be questioned by senators at the first confirmation hearing of an overloaded week in Washington, where Republicans are moving to steamroller opposition to nine of Trump’s contentious selections.