The Senate Judiciary Committee released a list of nine men and women on Friday evening who they plan to call to testify next week on Sen. Jeff Sessions’ qualifications to serve as attorney general in President-elect Trump’s administration.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Shelby of Alabama will open the two-day hearing, slated for Jan. 10-11. Shelby is Sessions’ home-state senator, and was expected to testify on his behalf, as is customary for the other senator representing the same state as the nominee to do.
The selection of Collins, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate, was designed to demonstrate that Sessions, a staunch conservative, is expected to have strong support throughout the entire Republican conference, a Senate source told the Washington Examiner.
The witnesses called by Republicans are: former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, Fraternal Order of Police President Chuck Canterbury, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow and DNA Saves co-founder Jayann Sepich.
Sepich is a victims’ rights activist.
Kirsanow, a conservative Cleveland laywer, praised Sessions’ nomination as soon as Trump made it in mid-November. Nearly 15 years ago, liberals tried to keep Kirsanow off the commission, a battle that the Supreme Court ultimately decided in his favor.
Democrats have called ACLU legal director David Cole, NAACP President Cornell Brooks, U.S. veteran Oscar Vasquez, and Mirror Memoirs founder Amita Swadhin.
Vasquez has benefited from President Obama’s executive order allowing children of illegal immigrants who are under the age of 31 and have been in the country before age 16 to remain without fear of deportation. Sessions opposes the executive order. On the campaign trail, Trump was a critic of the program but more recently has suggested he is open to a compromise on the issue.
Swadhin is a sexual assault survivor and activist against child sex abuse.
Cole and Brooks are considered hostile witnesses after several leading liberal civil rights groups have ardently opposed Sessions’ nomination since it was made. Those views are based in part on a 1986 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Sessions’ appointment to a federal judgeship that the committee denied over charges of racism leveled against Sessions.
Sessions, who vigorously denied the allegations, went on to become attorney general of Alabama before winning a Senate seat and a place on the Judiciary Committee that once denied him the appointment.
The last senator to be confirmed for attorney general was John Ashcroft, another conservative who faced a bitter battle in a four-day hearing that extended for five weeks in the press and on the Senate floor. The Missouri Republican was ultimately confirmed when eight Democrats joined Republicans in backing his nomination, 58-42, when it came to a vote in the full Senate.
Senators fought over a number of social issues, including civil rights, abortion, religion and gun control.
