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Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions is Attorney General. 

  • Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III grew up in Hybart, AL (two hours north of Mobile) Small town with 10 houses, K-12 rode bus for white kids only. School was segregated. Father ran country store & Sessions helped out and played football (small but tenacious linebacker). 1981 Reagan appointed him US Attorney in Mobile, prosecuted three black civil rights workers for voter fraud, zero convictions. 1986 Reagan tapped him for federal district court judge. "During confirmation a Justice Department lawyer alleged that Sessions had called the NAACP "Communist-inspired" and "un-American." One witness said Sessions once referred to a white civil rights lawyer as a "disgrace to his race." And a black prosecutor who worked closely with him testified that Sessions had called him "boy." Sessions denied all of this at the hearing." He was voted down. His defining issue today is immigration today. He opposes a legal path to citizenship, backs Trump's plan for a wall and supports limiting legal immigration to protect American jobs. (NPR) 
  • Popular in Alabama. Aside from his first election he has never won with less than 59 percent of the vote and in 2014 he ran unopposed. (Washington Post)
  • His voting positions on the issues (OnTheIssues.org)
  • Received $35,750 from the NRA to vote against gun reform (US Uncut)
  • voted to expand the health coverage of fetuses at the expense of their mother's coverage. (MotherJones)
  • Sessions is co-sponsoring the euphemistically named bill, S.1598 - First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which will roll back LGBT rights in housing, employment, health care, and protections against violence and opposed reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. (Forbes)
  • Human Rights Campaign report on Sessions (HRC)

Timeline

2017.11.24Jeff Sessions is methodically reshaping the Justice Department to reflect his nationalist ideology and hard-line views, from calling for prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible to altering the department's legal stances in cases involving voting rights and LGBTQ issues some would call discrimination. washingtonpost.com (See also Department of Justice, LGBTQIA, Racism, Nationalism, Immigration, Muslim Immigration Ban, Assaults on Civil Liberties)
2017.11.30Attorney General Jeff Sessions declined to answer Congressman Adam Schiff's question asking whether President Trump ever asked him to obstruct the ongoing investigation into Russian inference in the 2016 presidential election. msn.com (See also Department of Justice, Russian Meddling in Election, Corruption, Trump Relationship with Russia)
2017.12.15The Department of Justice acknowledged in a statement that copies of private text messages exchanged between two former special-counsel investigators were disclosed to certain members of the media before they were given to Congress, even though those disclosures "were not authorized." businessinsider.com (See also Legal Issues, Reversals, Department of Justice)
2017.12.21On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton. nbcnews.com (See also Fascism, Belief in Conspiracy Theories, Department of Justice)
2017.12.21The Justice Department wiped a wide swath of "guidance documents" off the books on Thursday, withdrawing 25 documents — including one addressing integration of people with disabilities in state and local government programs and another on standards for assessing citizenship status discrimination. buzzfeed.com (See also People with Disabilities, Department of Justice, Immigrants)
2018.01.02Donald Trump's pick to run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) called for a crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities, saying politicians who help run them should be charged with crimes. thehill.com (See also Fascism, Immigration, Department of Justice)
2018.01.04Donald Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. nytimes.com (See also Department of Justice, 2016 Election, Corruption, Russian Meddling in Election)
2018.01.21Even though the Trump administration released a report supposedly from the Department of Homeland Security saying that "73% of terrorists were ‘foreign-born," DHS analysts had nothing to do with the report or the conclusion. thedailybeast.com (See also Immigration, Nationalism, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Muslims)
2018.01.22Attorney General Jeff Sessions has consistently urged FBI Director Christopher Wray to make a “fresh start” by cleaning house and firing his core team, including Andrew McCabe - the man who the White House just picked to lead the FBI when Donald Trump fired James Comey, causing Wray to threaten his resignation. splinternews.com (See also Corruption, Legal Issues, Department of Justice)
2018.01.23Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned for several hours as part of the special counsel investigation, and the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was interviewed by the office last year, marking the first time that investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, are known to have questioned a member of President Trump’s cabinet. nytimes.com (See also Department of Justice, Trump Relationship with Russia, Legal Issues)
2018.01.29Andrew G. McCabe abruptly stepped down on Monday as the F.B.I.’s deputy director after months of withering criticism from Donald Trump, telling friends he felt pressure from the head of the bureau to leave, adding to what has already been a chaotic upheaval at the F.B.I. under Mr. Trump, who has responded to an investigation into his campaign with broadside attacks against both the bureau and the Justice Department. nytimes.com (See also Unprecedented Actions, Unpresidential Behavior, Corruption, Department of Justice)
2018.02.01The Department of Justice has “effectively shuttered” an office created during the Obama administration to expand access to legal services to people who can’t afford them. splinternews.com (See also Department of Justice, Americans in Poverty)
2018.02.09Rachel L. Brand, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country’s top law enforcement agency has been under attack by Donald Trump. nytimes.com (See also Resignations and Dismissals, Department of Justice, 2016 Election)
2018.02.16After less than 13 months, more than 40 percent of the people Trump originally picked for Cabinet-level jobs have faced ethical or other controversies. washingtonpost.com (See also Administration Errors, Trump Cabinet, Corruption, Conflicts of Interest, Tom Price, Ryan Zinke, Steven Mnuchin, John Kelly, Ben Carson)
2018.02.25More than 13 months into the Trump administration, the Justice Department is now officially without its Senate-confirmed No. 3 in charge revealing that there are very few people serving in “permanent” roles in the Justice Department. buzzfeed.com (See also Department of Justice, Assaults on Government)
2018.03.01Donald Trump suggested using the death penalty on drug dealers to address the opioid epidemic, equating providing lethal drugs with murder. politico.com (See also Domestic Policy, Unpresidential Behavior, Department of Justice)
2018.03.06The Justice Department is suing California over immigration laws that oppose Mr. Trump’s agenda, saying state laws make it impossible for federal immigration officials to deport criminals born outside of the United States. nytimes.com (See also Immigration, Department of Justice, Legal Activity)
2018.03.13The San Francisco spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resigned over what he described as “false” and “misleading” statements made by top-ranking officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan. washingtonpost.com (See also Resignations and Dismissals, Department of State, False Statements, Immigration)
2018.03.16Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI deputy director Andrew Mc­Cabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire — a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to slander him and undermine the ongoing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign. washingtonpost.com (See also 2016 Campaign, Department of Justice, Conflicts of Interest, Resignations and Dismissals)
2018.03.18U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees. reuters.com (See also False Statements, leg, Legal Issues, trump, Trump Relationship with Russia)
2018.03.21Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed states to pursue the death penalty in certain drug-related cases as an answer to the opioid epidemic—a plan Donald Trump first announced this week in New Hampshire. splinternews.com (See also Department of Justice, Domestic Policy)
2018.03.21Nearly a year before Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired senior FBI official Andrew McCabe for what Sessions called a "lack of candor," McCabe oversaw a federal criminal investigation into whether Sessions himself lacked candor when testifying before Congress about contacts with Russian operatives. abcnews.go.com (See also False Statements, Department of Justice, Resignations and Dismissals)
2018.04.29The Justice Department deleted language about press freedom and racial gerrymandering from its internal manual. buzzfeed.com (See also Department of Justice, Assaults on Civil Liberties)
2018.05.25Mark S. Inch, the man in charge of the federal prison system, has resigned, stating he was tired of the Trump administration flouting "departmental norms" and complained that Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner had marginalized his role. nytimes.com (See also Resignations and Dismissals, Department of Justice, Jared Kushner)
2018.12.04The Trump administration freed federal prosecutors on Thursday to more aggressively enforce marijuana laws, effectively threatening to undermine the legalization movement that has spread to six states, rescinding an Obama-era policy that had discouraged federal prosecutors from bringing charges of marijuana-related crimes in states that have legalized sales of the drug. nytimes.com (See also Reversals, Department of Justice)

Analysis

Though most of the focus has been on Sessions' history of racism, Sessions has been one of the Senate's most vocal anti-immigration proponents. He has taken a stance against immigration bills providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and fought to slow the pace of legal immigrants "so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together." He has also stated that President Obama's Justice Department flouted the will of Congress by failing to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The Los Angeles Times cites hiring tougher immigration judges, stepping up prosecutions of low-level immigration-law violations, and cutting off law enforcement funds to cities that don't cooperate with a harsher immigration policy as just three steps Sessions could pursue as Attorney General.

Assessments

Eliana Johnson — The National Review

On Aug. 6, 2014, discussed Sessions record on immigration

Sessions, 67, is a low-profile guy. Though he is not well known nationally, he has for years now been the instrumental force in quashing repeated attempts to pass comprehensive immigration reform. He has a gentle, almost grandfatherly quality, but he doesn’t shy away from combat. He derided the 2007 bill as “no illegal alien left behind”; in a single press conference, he blasted it as a “colossal error,” an “absolute scandal,” and a “fiscal disaster.” He declared: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Frank Sharry — America's Voice

Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund, Frank Sharry, on Jan. 9, 2017, said: 

Anyone who votes to confirm Sessions as Attorney General must realize they would then own every action he takes in office.”