Possible AG pick Sessions was rejected for judgeship for racist remarks
Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, on Trump’s transition team, is up for attorney general.
Then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, Sessions’ nomination for the state’s U.S. District Court was rejected in 1986 after other U.S. attorneys testified that he was hostile to civil rights cases and once called an African-American lawyer “boy,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.
According to a 2002 report by the New Republic, the attorney in question testified that Sessions also warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks.”
Sessions denied making most of the remarks. He apologized for one comment he made in 1981, during a murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan: That he had thought the Klan was alright until he heard that some members smoked marijuana. He dismissed the remark as a joke, according to the Times.
A Justice Department employee also came forward and testified that Sessions derided the NAACP and ACLU as “Communist-inspired” and “un-American.” Sessions repeated that characterization during his own confirmation hearings, according to the New Republic, and went on to describe the Voting Rights Act as a “piece of intrusive legislation.”
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