Later this morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions will lay out his case before Senate colleagues over why he should be confirmed as the country’s next attorney general.
In particular, he will vow to tell incoming president Donald 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, according to prepared remarks to be made before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In his confirmation hearing before the committee, Sessions, R-Alabama, 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 is expected to tell Senators in his opening remarks.
Sessions recently faced criticism from top Democrats and some civil rights groups, who expressed concern over decades-old allegations that he made racist remarks when he was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama. In addition, he has criticized the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, and 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 testify today, according to prepared remarks. “I understand the demands for justice and fairness made by the LGBT community.”
However, much of Session’s opening remarks will 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,” Sessions is planning to 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, according to the prepared remarks. “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.”
Sessions, however, will not have the support of many Democrats, who have still expressed concern over testimony during his 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 on 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, is expected to 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 is planning to say.
from ABC News: Politics http://ift.tt/2jyE7dB
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