The former governor of Massachusetts — who once opposed Sen. Jeff Sessions in an Alabama voting rights case — is urging the Senate to reject his attorney general nomination.
In a three-page letter, former Gov. Deval Patrick accuses the Alabama Republican of “quasi-judicial activism” that Patrick says makes him unfit to head the Justice Department.
“At a time when our nation is so divided, when so many feel so deeply that their lived experience is unjust, Mr. Sessions is the wrong person to place in charge of our justice system,” Patrick, who now works for Bain Capital, wrote.
Patrick, who was a civil rights attorney in the DOJ under President Clinton, opposed Sessions in a 1985 Alabama voting rights case when he worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Sessions served for 12 years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama before being elected to the Senate in 1996.
Sessions prosecuted the 1985 case in which Patrick represented one of the three activists — dubbed the “Perry County Three” — being targeted by federal prosecutors for alleged voting fraud.
All three defendants in the case were ultimately acquitted by a jury, but Patrick called the manner in which Sessions “pursued this case” to be “troubling.”
“For 30 years I have viewed the prosecution of the Perry County Three as a cautionary tale. I believe it demonstrates what can happen when prosecutorial discretion is unchecked, when regard for facts is secondary to political objectives. What can happen is that the rule of law is imperiled,” Patrick wrote. “In a republic based on law, this is not the kind of risk any of us should accept in our attorney general.”
Patrick will be overseas during Sessions’ confirmation hearing Jan. 10-11, and thus apologized for being unable to give his testimony in person.
