Feb 08, 2017 · The vote is scheduled to begin at 6:50 p.m. EST. Watch here. Contact us at [email protected].
Feb 08, 2017 · The Senate voted to confirm Sessions 52-47. “It is with great pride that I cast my vote in favor of my good friend Jeff Sessions to be our country’s Attorney General,” Inhofe said. “Jeff Sessions is extremely well qualified for this job having served as U.S. attorney for Alabama’s Southern District and as Alabama’s attorney general ...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) issued the following statement regarding her vote to confirm U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as Attorney General: “Senator Sessions has had a distinguished legal career and has consistently demonstrated his respect for the law. After serving alongside Senator Sessions, I have seen firsthand his …
The Senate confirmed the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) as our nation’s attorney general on the evening of February 8, by a near-party-line vote of 52 to 47. by Warren Mass
Feb 08, 2017 · The Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as the next attorney general Wednesday evening by a vote of 52-47, mostly along party lines. The one Democrat who voted in support of Sessions was Sen. Joe ...
Sessions was elected Attorney General of Alabama in November 1994, unseating incumbent Democrat Jimmy Evans with 57% of the vote. The harsh criticism he had received from Senator Edward Kennedy, who called him a "throw-back to a shameful era" and a "disgrace", was considered to have won him the support of Alabama conservatives.
On April 3, 2017 , Sessions announced that he intended to review consent decrees in which local law enforcement agencies had agreed to Department oversight. U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar then denied Sessions's request to delay a new consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department.
Trump would later state in an August 22, 2018 interview with Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt that the only reason he nominated Sessions was because Sessions was an original supporter during his presidential campaign. The nomination engendered support and opposition from various groups and individuals. He was introduced by Senator Susan Collins from Maine who said, "He's a decent individual with a strong commitment to the rule of law. He's a leader of integrity. I think the attacks against him are not well founded and are unfair." More than 1,400 law school professors wrote a letter urging the Senate to reject the nomination. A group of black pastors rallied in support of Sessions in advance of his confirmation hearing; his nomination was supported by Gerald A. Reynolds, an African American former chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Six NAACP activists, including NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, were arrested at a January 2017 sit-in protesting the nomination.
Sessions replied that he was "not aware of any of those activities" and said "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have – did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."
Sessions and his wife Mary have three children and as of March 2020, ten grandchildren. The family attends a United Methodist church. Specifically, Jeff and Mary Sessions are members of the Ashland Place United Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama; Jeff Sessions has taught Sunday school there.
Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose the nomination. In her letter, she wrote that "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.".
In a May 2017 letter, Sessions personally asked congressional leaders to repeal the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment so that the Justice Department could prosecute providers of medical marijuana. The Rohrabacher–Farr amendment is a 2014 measure that bars the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana". Sessions wrote in the letter that "I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime." John Hudak of the Brookings Institution criticized the letter, stating that it was a "scare tactic" that "should make everyone openly question whether candidate Trump's rhetoric and the White House's words on his support for medical marijuana was actually a lie to the American public on an issue that garners broad, bipartisan support."