Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Attorney general nominee pledges to back Supreme Court rulings
Sen. Sessions: Would abide by laws on gay marriage, abortion
Sen. Jeff Session pressed about previous political positions in confirmation hearing.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Sessions forcefully defended his civil rights record Tuesday and pledged, if confirmed as the nation’s next attorney general, to put aside his personal views and uphold laws protecting abortion and same-sex marriage.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, Sessions also vowed to recuse himself from decisions involving former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material.
The daylong confirmation hearing was a mostly collegial affair with fellow senators politely prodding the 70-year-old former federal prosecutor to explain his record on issues ranging from torture to immigration.
As a longtime member of the committee now reviewing his expected nomination to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Sessions has sat on the opposite side of the witness table for five previous confirmation hearings for attorney general candidates.
So it’s no surprise that the seasoned Alabama lawmaker avoided any self-inflicted wounds during his testimony, keeping his composure amid questioning and periodic disruptions from protesters in the audience.
When pressed on his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, the Alabama senator told Democratic colleagues that both issues had been settled by the Supreme Court and that he would abide by those decisions. Similarly, on the use of waterboarding against terrorism suspects, which Sessions has previously supported, he said Congress had clearly outlawed the practice.
Session began his testimony by offering his most strident defense yet against allegations that, as a U.S. attorney in the 1980s, he had improperly targeted civil rights advocates for prosecution on voter fraud charges and had made racially insensitive comments about the Ku Klux Klan and minorities.
“These are damnably false charges,” Sessions said, adding that he “did not harbor the race-based animosities I am accused of. I did not.”
Those accusations, made by fellow Justice Department attorneys at the time, helped torpedo Sessions’ 1986 nomination by President Ronald Reagan to become a federal judge.
Sessions is again being assailed by civil rights groups, who point to his Senate record of voting against hate-crime legislation, immigration reform and efforts to ban torture as evidence that he would not fairly enforce the laws protecting minorities.
Sessions testified he hoped to work closely with local police and would aggressively combat gun violence, gang crimes and drug trafficking.
The senator did not stray from his long-held hard-line views on immigration enforcement, testifying he would aggressively “prosecute those who repeatedly violate our borders” and support rescinding an Obama administration program that deferred deportation of hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, those brought to the country illegally as children.
“It is very questionable constitutionally,” Sessions said of Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He did not say whether he believed the 742,000 immigrants protected under the program should be deported.
On countererrorism, Sessions said he would fight the “scourge of radical Islam” and that he believed that the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should continue to house terror suspects.
Sessions added that he does not support “the idea that Muslims as a religious group should be denied admissions to the United States,” a position Trump once backed.
The hearing is scheduled to continue Wednesday with a long list of witnesses, including Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, whose planned testimony in opposition to a fellow senator’s candidacy for a Cabinet job would be an unprecedented step.
Sessions is widely expected to win confirmation from his colleagues in the Republican-controlled Senate. GOP senators on the committee offered nothing but unstinting support Tuesday.
Even so, Sessions has a long and complicated history on racial matters, and the toughest questions posed by senators focused on how he would deal with civil rights laws, hate crimes and access to the polls.
The would-be attorney general waded into many of controversial issues that have long dogged the Justice Department, including whether it should reopen its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
Sessions said he would recuse himself from any Clinton-related matters because he had often attacked her on the campaign trail.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., asked whether Sessions believed Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Emails hacked from the DNC and Podesta’s email account disrupted the Clinton campaign, and the intelligence community and the FBI have concluded that the cyber attacks were ordered by high-ranking Russian officials with the goal of hurting Clinton and helping Trump.
Sessions said he had not been briefed on the investigation but has “no reason to doubt” the findings.