From the moment Donald Trump picked Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next attorney general, it was clear what Democrats would need to defeat the Sessions nomination: a surprise witness. It was such a witness whose testimony led to the Senate’s rejection of Sessions for a federal judgeship in 1986.
Back then, a reluctant Justice Department lawyer, Gerald Hebert, was drawn into testifying against Sessions by the staff of then-Judiciary committee chairman Joe Biden. At a confirmation hearing, he said Sessions had made racially tainted remarks when they worked together on civil rights cases in Alabama in the early 1980s.
Hebert’s testimony was damaging because it dealt with Sessions’s alleged personal beliefs. Hebert said Sessions had agreed that a white lawyer who handled civil rights cases was “a traitor to his race” and that he had said the ACLU and NAACP were “un-American.” At the hearing, Sessions said he didn’t recall the “traitor” statement and in any case did not believe that. He said he objected to the two groups because they backed the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Nonetheless, Sessions was rejected by the committee for being “insensitive” on matters of race. “The two statements became the core of the case against Sessions, mentioned every time an adversary accused him of racism or racial insensitivity,” Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner.
Wednesday, the “surprise” witness before the Judiciary committee was a Senate colleague of Sessions, Cory Booker of New Jersey. It was the first time one senator had testified against another’s confirmation. This time, the unexpected testimony failed.
And there was a reason it did. Booker had nothing to say about Sessions’s personal and private views on race. He had no secrets about Sessions to reveal. His opposition turned out to be a disagreement over policy. A liberal, Booker objected to Sessions’s conservative views. For those eager to derail the Sessions nomination, this had to be a letdown. As soon as Booker finished his testimony, the air went out of the anti-Sessions balloon.
Here is the core of Booker’s opposition:
“If confirmed, Senator Sessions will be required to pursue justice for women, but his record indicates he won’t. He will be expected to defend the equal rights of gay and lesbian and transgender Americans, but the record indicates that he won’t. He will be expected to defend voting rights, but his record indicates that he won’t. He will be expected to defend the rights of immigrants and affirm their human dignity, but the record indicates that he won’t.”
But the Sessions record doesn’t show any of that. It shows that he takes a different approach on these issues—a conservative approach—than Booker would. And in his own testimony Tuesday, Sessions said he would protect these rights.
