Nominees:
Attorney general, Homeland Security choices vetted.
Washington — Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions fervently rejected “damnably false” accusations of past racist comments Tuesday as he challenged Democratic concerns about the civil rights commitment he would bring as Donald Trump’s attorney general. He vowed at his confirmation hearing to stay independent from the White House and stand up to Trump when necessary.
Sessions laid out a sharply conservative vision for the Justice Department he would oversee, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration, gun violence and the “scourge of radical Islamic terrorism” and to keep open the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
But he also distanced himself from some of Trump’s public pronouncements.
He said waterboarding, a now-banned harsh interrogation technique that Trump has at times expressed support for, was “absolutely improper and illegal.”
Though he said he would prosecute immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and criticized as constitutionally “questionable” an executive action by President Barack Obama that shielded certain immigrants from deportation, he said he did “not support the idea that Muslims, as a religious group, should be denied admission to the United States.”
Trump has called for a temporary total ban on Muslims entering this country but has more recently proposed “extreme vetting.”
Sessions asserted that he could confront Trump if needed, saying an attorney general must be prepared to resign if asked to do something “unlawful or unconstitutional.”
His past — including a 1986 judicial nomination that failed amid allegations that he’d made racially charged comments — hovered over the proceedings. Protesters calling Sessions a racist were hustled out by Capitol police.
Homeland Security
Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security was also questioned Tuesday.
Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he favors a wall to secure the border with Mexico but that such a structure alone won’t be enough.
“A physical barrier in and of itself will not do the job,” he said. “Certainly it has to be a layered approach.”
Answering questions about his plans to secure the border, stop the flow of drugs and curb illegal border crossings, Kelly told lawmakers border security shouldn’t only focus on the frontier with Mexico, but “1,500 miles south” in Central America. He said the U.S. should help address violence in a trio of Central American countries — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — along with demand for drugs in the U.S. to stem both the flow of drugs and people seeking refuge from violence.
Kelly’s confirmation is almost assured — a reality expressed by both Republican and Democratic senators Tuesday — but members of the committee nonetheless pressed him to specify his stances on immigration enforcement, border security and some of Trump’s more controversial suggestions during the campaign, including the possibility of a registration system for Muslim immigrants.
Kelly told lawmakers he does not support any registration of people in the U.S. based on ethnicity or religion. He also said he accepts with “high confidence” reports from the intelligence community that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
The normally blunttalking Marine walked a fine line in his answers about how Trump’s Homeland Security Department will carry out efforts to find and deport immigrants living in the country illegally. Asked about the fate of young immigrants protected from deportation by President Barack Obama, Kelly told Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California that “the law would guide him” in every decision he will make if confirmed.
He added that he did not anticipate young immigrants who have not committed crimes in the U.S. being a top enforcement priority.