[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 23 (Thursday, February 9, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E170-E171]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 URGING SENATE TO REJECT NOMINATION OF SEN. JEFF SESSIONS FOR ATTORNEY 
                                GENERAL

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 9, 2017

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the text of an 
op-ed that was published yesterday in The Hill, entitled ``When It 
Comes to Leading the Justice Department, the Senate Should Just Say No 
To Sen. Sessions,'' whose headquarters building is named after Robert 
F. Kennedy, by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

                     [From The Hill, Feb. 8, 2017]

When It Comes to Leading the Justice Department, the Senate Should Just 
                           Say No to Sessions

                        (By Sheila Jackson Lee)

       Many people think the role of the U.S. Attorney General is 
     simply to be the nation's chief prosecutor. This seriously 
     understates the responsibility, power, and moral authority of 
     the office. The attorney general is the lawyer for the 
     American people. He is not the president's lawyer. The 
     Attorney General leads the Department of Justice and justice 
     is his client and his mission. As a member of the President's 
     Cabinet, it is important that the Attorney General have the 
     trust of the President, but as the ``People's Lawyer,'' it is 
     essential that he or she have the trust and confidence of the 
     American people.
       The nomination of U.S. Sen. Jefferson Beauregard ``Jeff'' 
     Sessions III of Alabama to be the next Attorney General of 
     the United States does not inspire the required trust and 
     confidence.
       Many of the senator's supporters, ranging from his 
     Republican colleagues in the Senate to current and former 
     staffers to home state friends and constituents, praise the 
     senator for his modesty and courtesy and manners. The four-
     term senator and former state and federal prosecutor is, we 
     are told, learned in the law, a person of deep faith, a good 
     man who loves his family, his state, and his country.
       We can, as the lawyers say, stipulate that these assertions 
     are true. But that does not make him an appropriate and 
     deserving candidate to be Attorney General of the United 
     States. And that is because the office of Attorney General 
     and the Department of Justice he or she leads is different in 
     a very fundamental way from every other Cabinet department.
       Unlike, say, the secretary of Transportation or Commerce or 
     Education, or even the secretary of Defense or State, the 
     Attorney General leads a department that is charged with 
     administering the laws and enforcing the Constitutional 
     guarantees and protections that directly affect every 
     American, all 320 million of us.
       Sen. Sessions may be a courtly and courteous Southern 
     gentleman but those qualities, charming and desirable as they 
     may be in a senator, simply are not nearly enough to make one 
     fit to serve as Attorney General of the United States of 
     America.
       The position of Attorney General is unique because he or 
     she is the only Cabinet officer who owes a stronger 
     allegiance to the American people than to the president who 
     nominated him or her. This is not true even for the 
     secretaries of State, of Defense, or of the Treasury because 
     while they are all charged with upholding the Constitution, 
     their views regarding the fundamental rights and civil 
     liberties of the American people are not essential to the 
     execution of their governmental duties.
       One of the major reasons why the nomination of a sitting 
     four-term senator to be Attorney General is unprecedented is 
     that the role of a senator is to be a partisan advocate for 
     specific legislative outcomes while the role of the Attorney 
     General is to enforce the law. It is dangerous to combine 
     this partisan zeal with the power and discretion vested in 
     the Attorney General to shape legal policy in the federal 
     judiciary. As Attorney General, Sen. Sessions will have an

[[Page E171]]

     outsized role in determining which cases will be brought and 
     what position the United States will take in cases decided by 
     the Supreme Court.
       An alarming case in point is the Executive Order issued by 
     the president banning Muslims from predominately Muslim 
     countries from entering the United States, which has been 
     denounced by leading national security and foreign policy 
     experts, deemed unconstitutional by scores of law professors 
     and other scholars, sparked peaceful mass demonstrations 
     across the nation, and is opposed by a majority of the 
     American public. The president's ban on Muslims entering the 
     United States was deemed such a clear and egregious violation 
     of the Constitution that then Acting Attorney General Sally 
     Yates announced that she could not, consistent with her oath, 
     defend the order in court.
       Sen. Sessions, however, appears not be troubled in the 
     slightest by the cavalier rejection of the principle of 
     religious liberty implicit in the executive order. This is 
     hardly surprising since Sen. Sessions was one of the 
     earliest, most influential, and enthusiastic backers of the 
     Trump presidential campaign and its unconscionable and 
     unconstitutional immigration policies, including the ``total 
     and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States'' 
     announced by candidate Trump in December 2015. As Sen. 
     Sessions told ABC News in May 2016: ``I don't think Trump has 
     gone too far, . . . we should have a temporary ban on entry 
     of people into the country from the Muslim world, but that's 
     because we have an ineffective screening process . . . so I 
     think we're moving in the right direction.''
       As noted by the more than 1,000 State Department employees 
     who have registered their dissent to the executive order, 
     because there has been a virtual absence of terror attacks 
     committed in recent years by Syrian, Iraqi, Irani, Libyan, 
     Somalia, Sudanese, and Yemeni nationals living in the United 
     States, the president's Muslim ban will have little practical 
     effect in improving public safety.
       What it will do, however, is despoil our relations with 
     these countries, and much of the Muslim world, which sees the 
     ban, rightly, as religiously-motivated. So instead of 
     strengthening relations with countries that should be our 
     allies and partners in the fight against terrorism, we 
     alienate them, inflame sentiment against the United States 
     among their citizens, and deprive ourselves of vital 
     intelligence and resources needed to fight the root causes of 
     terror.
       Adoption of this wrong-headed policy appears to mean to 
     Sen. Sessions that ``we're moving in the right direction.'' 
     That any member of the President's Cabinet could hold these 
     views is very troubling. That such views are held by the 
     person who could be the Attorney General is frightening and 
     disqualifying.
       After all, the U.S. Attorney General and Justice Department 
     is not only the instrument of justice but also the living 
     symbol of the Constitution's promise of equal justice 
     under law. The nation's greatest Attorney Generals 
     conveyed this commitment to equal justice by their prior 
     experience, their words and deeds, and their character.
       Think Herbert Brownell, Attorney General for Republican 
     President Eisenhower, who oversaw the integration of Little 
     Rock's Central High School. Think Robert Jackson, Attorney 
     General for Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt, who led 
     the prosecution team at the Nazi War Crimes trial in 
     Nuremburg, Germany. Think Robert F. Kennedy, for whom the 
     Main Justice Building is named, bringing to bear the 
     instruments of federal power to protect Mississippi Freedom 
     Riders and to stare down Gov. George Wallace in the 
     successful effort to integrate the University of Alabama. 
     Think Elliot Richardson, Attorney General under Republican 
     President Richard Nixon, who stood for fidelity to the U.S. 
     Constitution and the rule of law in the infamous `Saturday 
     Night Massacre' during the Watergate scandal.
       Those who argue the Sessions' nomination is no different 
     than those of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch are simply wrong. 
     The difference is stark--Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch came 
     to the office of Attorney General as career professionals 
     with no history or record of partisan political advocacy. 
     Unlike Sen. Sessions, neither of them ever served in a 
     legislative body or voted to pass or defeat the legislation 
     the Department of Justice is charged with administering.
       Nothing in Sen. Sessions' 70 years inspires any confidence 
     that he possesses the qualities of any of our distinguished 
     former Attorneys General and there is less reason for 
     optimism that he will grow in office.
       As a U.S. senator from Alabama, the state from which the 
     infamous Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder 
     originated, Sen. Sessions has failed to play a constructive 
     role in repairing the damage to the Voting Rights Act caused 
     by that decision. He was one of the leading opponents of the 
     reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Sen. 
     Sessions's record in support of efforts to bring needed 
     reform to the nation's criminal justice system is virtually 
     non-existent. And his Senate voting record and rhetoric has 
     endeared him to white nationalist websites and organizations 
     like Breitbart and Stormfront.
       Sen. Sessions was the first federal prosecutor in the 
     country to bring charges against civil rights activists for 
     voter fraud and has called the landmark Voting Rights Act ``a 
     piece of intrusive legislation.'' He is one of the Senate's 
     most hostile opponents of comprehensive immigration reform 
     and was a principal architect of the draconian and incendiary 
     immigration policy advocated by the current president during 
     the 2016 campaign. When it comes to the effort to diversify 
     the federal judiciary in his home state of Alabama and the 
     Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Sessions has at best 
     been missing in action.
       As Attorney General of the state of Alabama, Sen. Sessions 
     fought to continue practices that harmed schools 
     predominantly attended by African-American students, 
     including leading the fight to uphold the state of Alabama's 
     inequitable school funding mechanism after it had been deemed 
     unconstitutional by the Alabama circuit court. Although Sen. 
     Sessions has publicly taken credit for desegregation efforts 
     in the state of Alabama, there is no evidence of his 
     participation in the desegregation of Alabama schools or any 
     school desegregation lawsuits filed by then-Attorney General 
     Sessions.
       Sen. Session's lengthy public record makes it difficult to 
     place much faith in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary 
     Committee. After staunchly opposing the Violence Against 
     Women Act, the repeal of ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'' the 
     expansion of anti-hate legislation to include sexual 
     orientation, and fighting the removal of the Confederate flag 
     from public buildings, the long-time opponent of voluntary 
     desegregation in Alabama now claims to be committed to the 
     cause of equal opportunity for all Americans. The proponent 
     of overruling Roe v. Wade now presents himself as a defender 
     and protector of a woman's right to choose. The outspoken 
     advocate of unfettered Second Amendment rights now says he 
     can be trusted to enforce the nation's gun violence 
     prevention laws.
       Actions speak louder than words, and in the case of Sen. 
     Sessions his 30-year record of intense opposition on so many 
     critical issues involving civil rights, women's rights, 
     voting rights, criminal justice and immigration reform, and 
     equal educational opportunity is the most compelling and 
     powerful evidence that he should not be confirmed by the 
     Senate to be the nation's 84th Attorney General.

                          ____________________