Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sessions confirmed by Senate
Controversies await new attorney general after narrow approval
After bitter, partisan debate, Wednesday’s vote for attorney general nominee fell mostly along party lines 52-47.
WASHINGTON — After enduring an unusually bitter confirmation battle for a sitting U.S. senator, Jeff Sessions will barely have time to settle into his fifth-floor office at the Justice Department before he takes center stage in some of the nation’s most acute controversies.
Sessions was approved, 52-47, in a vote largely down party lines. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was the only Democrat who supported him. Sessions voted present.
With too few votes to block the nomination, Senate Democrats slow-walked the confirmation, staging a dramatic overnight session Tuesday after Republicans silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., preventing her from reading decades-old criticism of Sessions from Coretta Scott King, the widow of the slain civil rights leader.
Even House Democrats, who have no vote on the confirmation, joined in protest Wednesday night in the Senate chamber.
In a post-vote valedictory speech Wednesday, Sessions alluded to the bitter partisanship and wished for more collegiality.
“Denigrating people who disagree with us, I think, is not a healthy trend for our body,” he said.
At the Justice Department, Sessions will be responsible for leading the legal defense of President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions, for halting and investigating terrorist attacks, and for probing hate crimes and abuses by local and state law enforcement.
He also is expected to play a key role in implementing Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigration by increasing deportations.
His boss isn’t making things easier. Last weekend, Trump denounced a federal judge in Seattle who had temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order suspending immigration and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.
A three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard arguments Tuesday on the government’s effort to lift the stay. The judges did not issue an immediate ruling, and Trump complained Wednesday that the legal process was taking too long.
The legal battle over the travel ban is expected to wind up in the Supreme Court.
Sessions “is in a tight spot, that is for sure,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “He has a tough job for a whole panoply of reasons.”
Sessions was first elected to the Senate from Alabama in 1996 and served two decades on the Judiciary Committee, which reviews federal judges and conducts oversight of the Justice Department.
But in a partisan era, his confirmation hearings broke on party lines. In the end, he did not receive a single vote from Democrats on the committee.
Supporters say Sessions is uniquely qualified to lead the Justice Department in such a turbulent time.
Pointing to his 12 years as U.S. attorney in Alabama, and two years as state attorney general, they said Sessions has the experience to prosecute criminals, make policy decisions and aggressively tackle illegal immigration.
They described him as personable and courteous, traits that led him to be generally well regarded in the Senate, and could help him win over career Justice Department lawyers.
Democrats and civil rights groups worry that Sessions’ conservative record on civil rights, voting rights and environmental laws portends trouble.
They also are concerned that such an ardent Trump advocate — Sessions was one of Trump’s earliest and most enthusiastic campaign surrogates — will oversee the reported federal investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
U.S. intelligence agencies last month issued a report that concluded Russian intelligence agencies launched cyberattacks against Democratic Party officials and took other measures aimed at influencing American voters to support Trump.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other Democrats have questioned whether Sessions can be trusted to enforce the law, especially if potential investigative targets are in the White House.
Sessions has said he won’t be afraid to tell Trump he was wrong or that a planned action is unconstitutional. An attorney general has “to be able to say no, both for the country, for the legal system and for the president, to avoid situations that are not acceptable. I understand that duty,” Sessions testified.