One of those people, William Smith, was hired by and worked with Sessions for nearly a decade as the first black chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to Smith, the people making the accusations against Sessions are simply trying to spread "false rumors" because they disagree with the senator politically.
William Smith with Jeff Sessions. A black, longtime former aide to Jeff Sessions said the attorney general nominee and Alabama senator said Sessions never made any …
Sessions was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama beginning in 1975. In 1981, President Reagan nominated him to be the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The Senate confirmed him and he held that position for twelve years.
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Jan 11, 2017 · 5. Sessions called his fellow black lawyers “boy,” making disparaging comments about African Americans during his tenure as US Attorney. During the 1986 hearing, the main anti-Sessions testimony came from assistant U.S. attorney Thomas Figures, a black lawyer who appeared to loathe Sessions.
He was confirmed and sworn in as Attorney General in February 2017. In his confirmation hearings, Sessions stated under oath that he did not have contact with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign and that he was unaware of any contact between Trump campaign members and Russian officials.
Sessions's views on drugs and crime have since softened.
On March 27, 2017, Sessions told reporters that sanctuary cities failing to comply with policies of the Trump administration would lose federal funding, and cited the shooting of Kathryn Steinle as an example of an illegal immigrant committing a heinous crime.
Trump would later state in an August 22, 2018 interview with Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt that the only reason he nominated Sessions was because Sessions was an original supporter during his presidential campaign. The nomination engendered support and opposition from various groups and individuals. He was introduced by Senator Susan Collins from Maine who said, "He's a decent individual with a strong commitment to the rule of law. He's a leader of integrity. I think the attacks against him are not well founded and are unfair." More than 1,400 law school professors wrote a letter urging the Senate to reject the nomination. A group of black pastors rallied in support of Sessions in advance of his confirmation hearing; his nomination was supported by Gerald A. Reynolds, an African American former chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Six NAACP activists, including NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, were arrested at a January 2017 sit-in protesting the nomination.
Sessions replied that he was "not aware of any of those activities" and said "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have – did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."
In 2013, Sessions sent a letter to National Endowment for the Humanities enquiring why the foundation funded projects that he deemed frivolous. He also criticized the foundation for distributing books related to Islam to hundreds of U.S. libraries, saying "Using taxpayer dollars to fund education program grant questions that are very indefinite or in an effort to seemingly use Federal funds on behalf of just one religion, does not on its face appear to be the appropriate means to establish confidence in the American people that NEH expenditures are wise."
Sessions and his wife Mary have three children and as of March 2020, ten grandchildren. The family attends a United Methodist church. Specifically, Jeff and Mary Sessions are members of the Ashland Place United Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama; Jeff Sessions has taught Sunday school there.
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A landmark piece of legislation, the Voting Rights Act (1965), or at least the spirit of the VRA, protects American voters against racial discrimination. The law was a product of a specific time and specific place. That place no longer exists, but the law hasn’t been amended since 1975. It’s outdated. The law has given way to racial gerrymandering and other problematic practices. In addition, the law is quite intrusive. That’s Sessions’ argument. Conservative jurists on the Supreme Court happen to agree. But because the law is associated with the Civil Rights movement, liberals are now reframing Sessions’ justifiable and intellectually astute critique of the law as racist.
This is perhaps the most pernicious myth of all. The Democrats’ story goes like this: As US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, Sessions reportedly suggested he supported the Klan. The statement was one of the points of contention the senate cited for denying Sesions’ federal judgeship nomination in 1986.