Black lawmakers say Sen. Jeff Sessions is unfit to be attorney general
WASHINGTON — Black lawmakers said Wednesday that Sen. Jeff Sessions at times has shown hostility toward civil rights, making him unfit to be attorney general, as a 1986 letter from the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., surfaced strongly expressing opposition to the Alabama senator.
In the second day of confirmation hearings, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Sessions’ colleague, and Rep. John Lewis, DGa., who was beaten when he marched for civil rights in the 1960s, warned that Sessions could move the country backward if confirmed as Donald Trump’s top law enforcement official.
Booker said the “arc of the universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it,” and the country needs an attorney general who is determined to bend it.
“Senator Sessions’ record does not speak to that desire, intention, or will,” Booker said, noting his opposition to overhauling the criminal justice system and his positions on other issues affecting minority groups.
Lewis told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the country needs “someone who’s going to stand up, speak up and speak out for the people that need help, the people who have been discriminated against.”
He has solid support and is expected to easily win confirmation.
Not everyone on the panel criticized Sessions. Three men who had worked with Sessions in Alabama and Washington, all black, testified in support.
Jesse Seroyer, a former U.S. marshal for the Middle District of Alabama, said Sessions is a “good, honest person who is going to give all he has to make sure everyone is treated fairly under the law.”
Earlier in the day, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey also came to Sessions’ defense at the hearing. He wrote in his testimony that “of all the insidious practices that have crept into our politics in recent times, I know of none more insidious than casual and unjustified accusations of racism, smears that once leveled are difficult to wipe clean.”