The notorious white supremacist, anti-immigrant, misogynist, and
homophobic record of JEFF SESSIONS --Trump's new cabinet nominee for
ATTORNEY GENERAL--
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Post from November 18, 2016:
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Here's the 23-page memo attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions created devoted to opposing immigrants
http://www.sessions.senate.gov/…/immigration-primer-for-the… …
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Trump's attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions referred to the Voting Rights Act as a "piece of intrusive legislation."
ACLU National Retweeted
ACLU National @ACLU 3h3 hours ago
Getting to know Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's attorney general nominee
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Thomas Figures testified under oath that Sessions joked he thought KKK members were "OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Trump's attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions said immigration reform will “benefit everyone but actual American citizens.”
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions called for constitutional amendment to stop granting automatic citizenship to people born in the U.S.
Here's the 23-page memo attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions created devoted to opposing immigrants
http://www.sessions.senate.gov/…/immigration-primer-for-the… …
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Trump's attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions referred to the Voting Rights Act as a "piece of intrusive legislation."
ACLU National Retweeted
ACLU National @ACLU 3h3 hours ago
Getting to know Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's attorney general nominee
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Thomas Figures testified under oath that Sessions joked he thought KKK members were "OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Trump's attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions said immigration reform will “benefit everyone but actual American citizens.”
ACLU National @ACLU 2h2 hours ago
Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions called for constitutional amendment to stop granting automatic citizenship to people born in the U.S.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/trump-attorney-general-jeff…
POLITICS
Jeff Sessions Was Deemed Too Racist To Be A Federal Judge. He’ll Now Be Trump’s Attorney General.
He once joked that he only took issue with the KKK’s drug use and referred to civil rights groups as “un-American.”
November 17, 2016
by Ryan J. Reilly
Senior Justice Reporter
The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON ― The man who President-elect Donald Trump will nominate as the 84th attorney general of the United States was once rejected as a federal judge over allegations he called a black attorney “boy,” suggested a white lawyer working for black clients was a race traitor, joked that the only issue he had with the Ku Klux Klan was their drug use, and referred to civil rights groups as “un-American” organizations trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), an early Trump supporter who has been playing a major role on the Trump transition team, met with the president-elect in New York on Thursday. In a statement, the Trump team said the president-elect was “unbelievably impressed” with Sessions.
On Friday morning, Trump and Sessions confirmed that Sessions had been offered the attorney general position.
J. Gerald Hebert remembers Sessions’ time as the top federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, well. Speaking to The Huffington Post earlier this month, Hebert said he was stunned that an Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a possibility.
More than three decades ago, Hebert was in his 30s and working on voting rights cases for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He was based in D.C. but spent time in Alabama working with Sessions, who was a U.S. attorney in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
“He was very affable, always wanting to have a conversation, a cup of coffee,” Hebert said. “Over the course of those months, I had a number of conversations with him, and in a number of those conversations he made remarks that were deeply concerning.”
After Sessions was nominated to be a federal judge in 1986, Hebert appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about these remarks. It was unusual for a career DOJ lawyer to testify about a judicial nominee’s character, and Hebert said at the time that he did so with “very mixed feelings,” telling senators he considered Sessions “a friend.” Hebert told them Sessions had “a tendency to pop off” and that he was “not a very sensitive person when it comes to race relations.”
HuffPost reviewed a transcript of the Sessions’ 1986 confirmation hearings. In this selection, Hebert testified that he had once relayed comments about a white lawyer being described as a race traitor, and that Sessions had responded by saying “he probably is”:
Congressional transcript
Sessions testified that he did not believe he had made such a remark, but his views changed as he reflected.
“The best I could recall was that I said, well, he is not that popular around town; I have heard him referred to as a disgrace to his race,” Sessions said. He said he did not personally believe that the white civil rights attorney was a race traitor, and that he had respect for him.
Sessions testified that he enjoyed the “free flow of ideas” and liked to stir it up with Hebert when he was in town. “I like to discuss things. I am open: I like to discuss with liberals better than I do with conservatives,” Sessions said.
In describing one conversation with Hebert on civil rights, Sessions articulated his view that things were pretty great for minorities in the 1980s and that civil rights organizations were asking for too much.
“I made the comment that the fundamental legal barriers to minorities had been knocked down, and that in many areas blacks dominate the political area, and that when the civil rights organizations or the ACLU participate in asking for things beyond what they are justified in asking, they do more harm than good,” Sessions testified.
That’s not exactly how Hebert recalled it:
Congressional transcript
Sessions also called the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP “communist-inspired,” Hebert testified.
Thomas Figures, a former assistant U.S. attorney, backed up Hebert’s testimony about Sessions’ views. He told Congress that Sessions said the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation Push and the National Council of Churches “were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.”
“I recall saying that civil rights organizations, when they demand more than is legitimate, it hurts their position,” Sessions testified.
Figures, who died last year, also said that Sessions once warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks” after Figures told a white secretary that he found a comment she made offensive. Figures was the only black assistant U.S. attorney in the office.
“Had Mr. Sessions merely urged me to be careful what I say to ‘folks,’ that admonition would have been quite reasonable,” Figures said. “But that was not the language that he used. I realize, on the other hand, that Mr. Sessions’ remark may not have been premeditated. There was a period in our own lifetimes when blacks where regularly admonished to be particularly polite or deferential, and a remark of that sort may have just slipped out inadvertently.”
Figures also testified that Sessions and two others in the office referred to him as “boy.” Figures said he couldn’t say anything about it to Sessions because his position with him was “tentative.”
“I felt that if I had said anything or reacted in a manner in which thought appropriate, I thought I would be fired,” Figures said. “I had to guard my reaction to things, Senator, because I needed a job at the time... So I took a lot of things; I just kept it inside.”
Sessions “categorically” denied using the term “boy” to refer to Figures. “I have never used the word ‘boy’ to describe a black, nor would I tolerate it in my office,” Sessions testified.
Hebert said Figures’ testimony would be consistent with the views he believes Sessions holds.
“He demonstrated gross insensitivity to black people. So Tom Figures reporting that he had been called ‘boy’ by Jeff Sessions, that wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Hebert told HuffPost.
Figures also said that Sessions, during a “very spirited discussion” about one civil rights case, threw a file on the table and said, “I wish I could decline all of them.” Figures said it was clear the remark was made in anger, and noted that Sessions didn’t make him toss out all of the civil rights cases, even though he apparently wished that they’d disappear.
“Mr. Sessions did not make such a remark to me on any other occasion, and he did not direct me then, or at any other time, to in fact systematically decline all civil rights cases,” Figures testified.
Figures also said that Sessions would overrule him solely in criminal civil rights cases.
“In all fairness to Mr. Sessions, however, I should make clear that the problems which existed in the area of civil rights were not present in other aspects of my case assignments,” he said. “Except in criminal civil rights cases, Mr. Sessions deferred to my recommendations regarding whether to pursue cases, and never withdrew a case assignment because he disagreed with my recommendations.”
Sessions also remarked that he thought the KKK was OK until he found out they smoked marijuana, according to Figures. The statement was made in connection with the prosecution of a Klan member who had hanged a black man. From Figures’ testimony:
Congressional transcript
Questioned at the time by now-Vice President Joe Biden, Sessions admitted to the comments and said they were intended humorously.
Congressional transcript
Congressional transcript
Biden also asked Sessions about the allegation that he had used a racial slur after a court hearing when he was in private practice. (The term appears uncensored in the transcript below. The U.S. Senate didn’t approve C-SPAN cameras until later that year.)
Congressional transcript
Sessions’ nomination was ultimately defeated in June 1986, making him the first Reagan nominee the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected.
Before his rejection, Sessions told senators he denied many of the claims made against him and that he felt he had been “caricatured.”
“All of us know that when the confidence of a private conversation is breached by a party with ulterior motives or one who simply misunderstands what the speaker says or means, he speaker can always be embarrassed,” Sessions said. “I enjoy repartee and frequently engage in devil’s advocacy. In short, when I talk to friends, I do not guard every word that I say because I think that I know they know that my commitment to equality and justice is real, and they would not twist my words or misinterpret what I am saying to them.”
“I deny as strongly as I can express it that I am insensitive to the concerns of blacks,” Sessions said.
Hebert, like many civil rights advocates, is deeply concerned about the future of the Civil Rights Division in a Trump administration. He referenced the politicization of the Civil Rights Division under former President George W. Bush, when political officials abandoned much of the division’s work.
“I fear we’ll see a repeat of that, or perhaps worse,” Hebert said. “I worry about those who are in the Civil Rights Division now, and what it will do to their careers. But more importantly, what it’s going to do to minority voters, minority citizens, across the country who need their basic fundamental human rights protected.”
“Just the thought of him overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is frightening,” Hebert said. “He’s a mean-spirited individual.”
Hebert said his friends in Alabama were disappointed that Sessions didn’t become a federal judge because it would have prevented him from acceding to his current position.
“He would have quietly disappeared into the history books instead of being a U.S. senator and being on the Judiciary Committee,” Hebert said. “They tongue-in-cheek say to me, ‘Thanks a lot, Gerry.’”
POLITICS
Jeff Sessions Was Deemed Too Racist To Be A Federal Judge. He’ll Now Be Trump’s Attorney General.
He once joked that he only took issue with the KKK’s drug use and referred to civil rights groups as “un-American.”
November 17, 2016
by Ryan J. Reilly
Senior Justice Reporter
The Huffington Post
JEFF SESSIONS
WASHINGTON ― The man who President-elect Donald Trump will nominate as the 84th attorney general of the United States was once rejected as a federal judge over allegations he called a black attorney “boy,” suggested a white lawyer working for black clients was a race traitor, joked that the only issue he had with the Ku Klux Klan was their drug use, and referred to civil rights groups as “un-American” organizations trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), an early Trump supporter who has been playing a major role on the Trump transition team, met with the president-elect in New York on Thursday. In a statement, the Trump team said the president-elect was “unbelievably impressed” with Sessions.
On Friday morning, Trump and Sessions confirmed that Sessions had been offered the attorney general position.
J. Gerald Hebert remembers Sessions’ time as the top federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, well. Speaking to The Huffington Post earlier this month, Hebert said he was stunned that an Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a possibility.
More than three decades ago, Hebert was in his 30s and working on voting rights cases for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He was based in D.C. but spent time in Alabama working with Sessions, who was a U.S. attorney in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
“He was very affable, always wanting to have a conversation, a cup of coffee,” Hebert said. “Over the course of those months, I had a number of conversations with him, and in a number of those conversations he made remarks that were deeply concerning.”
After Sessions was nominated to be a federal judge in 1986, Hebert appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about these remarks. It was unusual for a career DOJ lawyer to testify about a judicial nominee’s character, and Hebert said at the time that he did so with “very mixed feelings,” telling senators he considered Sessions “a friend.” Hebert told them Sessions had “a tendency to pop off” and that he was “not a very sensitive person when it comes to race relations.”
HuffPost reviewed a transcript of the Sessions’ 1986 confirmation hearings. In this selection, Hebert testified that he had once relayed comments about a white lawyer being described as a race traitor, and that Sessions had responded by saying “he probably is”:
Congressional transcript
Sessions testified that he did not believe he had made such a remark, but his views changed as he reflected.
“The best I could recall was that I said, well, he is not that popular around town; I have heard him referred to as a disgrace to his race,” Sessions said. He said he did not personally believe that the white civil rights attorney was a race traitor, and that he had respect for him.
Sessions testified that he enjoyed the “free flow of ideas” and liked to stir it up with Hebert when he was in town. “I like to discuss things. I am open: I like to discuss with liberals better than I do with conservatives,” Sessions said.
In describing one conversation with Hebert on civil rights, Sessions articulated his view that things were pretty great for minorities in the 1980s and that civil rights organizations were asking for too much.
“I made the comment that the fundamental legal barriers to minorities had been knocked down, and that in many areas blacks dominate the political area, and that when the civil rights organizations or the ACLU participate in asking for things beyond what they are justified in asking, they do more harm than good,” Sessions testified.
That’s not exactly how Hebert recalled it:
Congressional transcript
Sessions also called the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP “communist-inspired,” Hebert testified.
Thomas Figures, a former assistant U.S. attorney, backed up Hebert’s testimony about Sessions’ views. He told Congress that Sessions said the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation Push and the National Council of Churches “were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.”
“I recall saying that civil rights organizations, when they demand more than is legitimate, it hurts their position,” Sessions testified.
Figures, who died last year, also said that Sessions once warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks” after Figures told a white secretary that he found a comment she made offensive. Figures was the only black assistant U.S. attorney in the office.
“Had Mr. Sessions merely urged me to be careful what I say to ‘folks,’ that admonition would have been quite reasonable,” Figures said. “But that was not the language that he used. I realize, on the other hand, that Mr. Sessions’ remark may not have been premeditated. There was a period in our own lifetimes when blacks where regularly admonished to be particularly polite or deferential, and a remark of that sort may have just slipped out inadvertently.”
Figures also testified that Sessions and two others in the office referred to him as “boy.” Figures said he couldn’t say anything about it to Sessions because his position with him was “tentative.”
“I felt that if I had said anything or reacted in a manner in which thought appropriate, I thought I would be fired,” Figures said. “I had to guard my reaction to things, Senator, because I needed a job at the time... So I took a lot of things; I just kept it inside.”
Sessions “categorically” denied using the term “boy” to refer to Figures. “I have never used the word ‘boy’ to describe a black, nor would I tolerate it in my office,” Sessions testified.
Hebert said Figures’ testimony would be consistent with the views he believes Sessions holds.
“He demonstrated gross insensitivity to black people. So Tom Figures reporting that he had been called ‘boy’ by Jeff Sessions, that wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Hebert told HuffPost.
Figures also said that Sessions, during a “very spirited discussion” about one civil rights case, threw a file on the table and said, “I wish I could decline all of them.” Figures said it was clear the remark was made in anger, and noted that Sessions didn’t make him toss out all of the civil rights cases, even though he apparently wished that they’d disappear.
“Mr. Sessions did not make such a remark to me on any other occasion, and he did not direct me then, or at any other time, to in fact systematically decline all civil rights cases,” Figures testified.
Figures also said that Sessions would overrule him solely in criminal civil rights cases.
“In all fairness to Mr. Sessions, however, I should make clear that the problems which existed in the area of civil rights were not present in other aspects of my case assignments,” he said. “Except in criminal civil rights cases, Mr. Sessions deferred to my recommendations regarding whether to pursue cases, and never withdrew a case assignment because he disagreed with my recommendations.”
Sessions also remarked that he thought the KKK was OK until he found out they smoked marijuana, according to Figures. The statement was made in connection with the prosecution of a Klan member who had hanged a black man. From Figures’ testimony:
Congressional transcript
Questioned at the time by now-Vice President Joe Biden, Sessions admitted to the comments and said they were intended humorously.
Congressional transcript
Congressional transcript
Biden also asked Sessions about the allegation that he had used a racial slur after a court hearing when he was in private practice. (The term appears uncensored in the transcript below. The U.S. Senate didn’t approve C-SPAN cameras until later that year.)
Congressional transcript
Sessions’ nomination was ultimately defeated in June 1986, making him the first Reagan nominee the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected.
Before his rejection, Sessions told senators he denied many of the claims made against him and that he felt he had been “caricatured.”
“All of us know that when the confidence of a private conversation is breached by a party with ulterior motives or one who simply misunderstands what the speaker says or means, he speaker can always be embarrassed,” Sessions said. “I enjoy repartee and frequently engage in devil’s advocacy. In short, when I talk to friends, I do not guard every word that I say because I think that I know they know that my commitment to equality and justice is real, and they would not twist my words or misinterpret what I am saying to them.”
“I deny as strongly as I can express it that I am insensitive to the concerns of blacks,” Sessions said.
Hebert, like many civil rights advocates, is deeply concerned about the future of the Civil Rights Division in a Trump administration. He referenced the politicization of the Civil Rights Division under former President George W. Bush, when political officials abandoned much of the division’s work.
“I fear we’ll see a repeat of that, or perhaps worse,” Hebert said. “I worry about those who are in the Civil Rights Division now, and what it will do to their careers. But more importantly, what it’s going to do to minority voters, minority citizens, across the country who need their basic fundamental human rights protected.”
“Just the thought of him overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is frightening,” Hebert said. “He’s a mean-spirited individual.”
Hebert said his friends in Alabama were disappointed that Sessions didn’t become a federal judge because it would have prevented him from acceding to his current position.
“He would have quietly disappeared into the history books instead of being a U.S. senator and being on the Judiciary Committee,” Hebert said. “They tongue-in-cheek say to me, ‘Thanks a lot, Gerry.’”
All,
AS I SAID BEFORE: JEFF SESSIONS IS NOTHING BUT A KLANSMAN IN A SUIT AND A CONTEMPTIBLE PATHOLOGICAL LIAR TO BOOT. DON'T BELIEVE ME? CHECK OUT WHAT THE LATE CORETTA SCOTT KING SAID ABOUT SESSIONS WHEN HE WAS REFUSED A FEDERAL JUDGESHIP IN 1986 BECAUSE OF HIS RAGING WHITE SUPREMACIST VIEWS AND BEHAVIOR...
Kofi
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/read-the-letter-coretta-…/…
PowerPost
Congress
Read the letter Coretta Scott King wrote opposing Sessions’s 1986 federal nomination
by Wesley Lowery
January 10, 2017
The Washington Post
The widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. urged Congress to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for federal judge, saying that allowing him to join the federal bench would “irreparably damage the work of my husband,” according to the letter written by King that was previously publicly unavailable and obtained on Tuesday by The Post.
(Read the full letter below)
“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,” King wrote in the cover page of her 9-page letter opposing Sessions’s nomination, which failed at the time.
“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”
Thirty years later, Sessions, now himself a senator, is again undergoing confirmation hearings as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and is facing fierce opposition from civil rights groups.
In the letter, King writes that Sessions’s ascension to the federal bench “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” arguing that as a U.S. attorney, the Alabama lawmaker pursued “politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions” and that he “lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.” She said Sessions’s conduct in prosecuting civil rights leaders in a voting fraud case “raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens.”
“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,” she wrote, later adding: “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.”
During the 1986 hearing, the letter and King’s opposition became a crucial part of the argument against Sessions’s confirmation. Current Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has not previously released the letter, which committee rules grant him the sole authority to reveal.
Buzzfeed News first reported the existence of the letter earlier Tuesday, noting that it was never entered into the congressional record by then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond.
The full letter: SEE ORIGINAL TEXT IN THE ARTICLE
AS I SAID BEFORE: JEFF SESSIONS IS NOTHING BUT A KLANSMAN IN A SUIT AND A CONTEMPTIBLE PATHOLOGICAL LIAR TO BOOT. DON'T BELIEVE ME? CHECK OUT WHAT THE LATE CORETTA SCOTT KING SAID ABOUT SESSIONS WHEN HE WAS REFUSED A FEDERAL JUDGESHIP IN 1986 BECAUSE OF HIS RAGING WHITE SUPREMACIST VIEWS AND BEHAVIOR...
Kofi
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/read-the-letter-coretta-…/…
PowerPost
Congress
Read the letter Coretta Scott King wrote opposing Sessions’s 1986 federal nomination
by Wesley Lowery
January 10, 2017
The Washington Post
The widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. urged Congress to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for federal judge, saying that allowing him to join the federal bench would “irreparably damage the work of my husband,” according to the letter written by King that was previously publicly unavailable and obtained on Tuesday by The Post.
(Read the full letter below)
“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,” King wrote in the cover page of her 9-page letter opposing Sessions’s nomination, which failed at the time.
“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”
Thirty years later, Sessions, now himself a senator, is again undergoing confirmation hearings as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and is facing fierce opposition from civil rights groups.
In the letter, King writes that Sessions’s ascension to the federal bench “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” arguing that as a U.S. attorney, the Alabama lawmaker pursued “politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions” and that he “lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.” She said Sessions’s conduct in prosecuting civil rights leaders in a voting fraud case “raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens.”
“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,” she wrote, later adding: “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.”
During the 1986 hearing, the letter and King’s opposition became a crucial part of the argument against Sessions’s confirmation. Current Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has not previously released the letter, which committee rules grant him the sole authority to reveal.
Buzzfeed News first reported the existence of the letter earlier Tuesday, noting that it was never entered into the congressional record by then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond.
The full letter: SEE ORIGINAL TEXT IN THE ARTICLE
