A Republican senator says attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is about to weather severe attacks from opposition groups over the next few days as his confirmation hearings take off.
“Over the next several days, you will see numerous vile efforts to smear Senator Sessions’ good name. His opponents will dredge up the bogus, discredited attacks made against him at his judicial confirmation hearing 30 years ago,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote in an op-ed published Monday. “There will be attempts to re-litigate the presidential campaign. People will bring up votes Sessions has taken over the past 20 years with which they disagree — and this last bit will be the most telling.”
Cruz said attempts to butcher Sessions’ past votes would be “irrelevant” because his job as attorney general would be enforcing the laws, not passing them. Sessions “undoubtedly has the integrity” to enforce laws he does not support, Cruz added.
Democratic resentment for Trump’s pick comes is a result of Sessions’ “exposing the seedy underbelly of the administration” as the Justice Department “sunk.”
“[T]hat’s actually what scares some people about an Attorney General Jeff Sessions: He’s a law-and-order devotee about to enter a lawless DOJ. If I were them — if I wanted to keep DOJ as a partisan agency unbound by law — I’d be scared, too,” Cruz said.
Sessions’ confirmation hearings are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.
