The first day of the confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions could have been a zoo. As one of Donald Trump’s earliest and most ardent supporters, Sessions might have been the first opportunity for Democrats and the activist left to indirectly channel their opposition to the president-elect. Sessions’s failed nomination to the federal bench in 1986, and the slew of allegations about racial insensitivity that arose during those hearings, ought to have provided his opponents with plenty of ammunition. And some of Sessions’s positions—on immigration, trade, criminal justice, and drugs—might have even been fodder for a few of his fellow Republicans to make the 70-year-old Alabama senator’s path to the Justice Department a little difficult.
Instead, Tuesday’s proceedings were pretty much a snooze—even the protestors who filled the meeting room looked bored an hour in. That’s because Sessions had two important dynamics in his favor: the respect of his colleagues in the Senate who will have to approve his appointment, and his preparedness to answer most, if not all, of the questions about his fitness for the office.
The first was evident from the get-go, with Republican senators Richard Shelby, also of Alabama, and Susan Collins of Maine introducing Sessions to the Judiciary committee. Former Arizona senator Jon Kyl, who played a big role in preparing his former colleague for the hearing, sat behind Sessions and stayed with the Sessions family during recess. Several Democrats congratulated Sessions for his nomination. Even the Democratic ranking member, Dianne Feinstein, admitted that it was “very difficult” to direct critical questions at Sessions because of their past work together on the Judiciary committee.
But it was also clear that Sessions had prepared well for the hearing. The nominee and his team had spent all weekend in his Capitol Hill office, directly across the hall from the Kennedy Caucus room where the hearing would be held. One source on his staff says Sessions had “high energy and high concentration” in preparing for what was to come.
It showed. Sessions deviated from his prepared remarks released to the press to address—”head on”, in his words—the accusations from his 1986 judgeship nomination. “I was accused in 1986 of failing to protect the voting rights of African Americans by presenting the Perry County voter fraud case, of condemning civil rights advocates and organizations, and even harboring sympathies for the KKK,” Sessions said. “These are damnably false charges.”
He noted, for example, that the case of voter fraud he pursued was not intended to throw out the votes of black voters, as liberal opponents had characterized it. “The voter fraud case my office prosecuted was in response to pleas from incumbent African American elected officials who claimed that absentee votes cast for them were stolen, altered, and cast for their opponents. The prosecution sought to protect the integrity of the ballot, not block voting,” he said.
The effect of his early and systematic refutation of these accusations disarmed Democratic senators who might have planned on pressing them. It certainly made Dianne Feinstein’s first question for Sessions, an anodyne inquiry about how the federal government should approach sex-trafficking prosecution, look like a retreat from any attempt to refight the battle of 1986. One of the more contentious exchanges came when Minnesota senator Al Franken sought to catch Sessions in a fib about his personal involvement in civil rights cases as a U.S. attorney, after three lawyers who worked for the U.S. attorney’s office published an op-ed saying Sessions was overstating his role.
“Are they distorting your record here?” Franken said.
“Yes,” Sessions answered, noting that he had signed off on the complaints for those cases and had worked closely with one of the accusing lawyers (whose name Sessions had at the ready). Franken was reduced to arguing semantics about “involvement” and reminding the committee several times that he himself was not a lawyer.
Even his deflections reflected his careful planning. When Democrats pressed him about how he, as attorney general, would enforce laws allowing same-sex marriage and abortion, Sessions directly stated he would uphold the laws, even those he disagreed with. “You have referred to Roe v. Wade as, quote, one of the worst, colossally erroneous Supreme Court decisions of all time, end quote,” Dianne Feinstein said. “Is that still your view?”
“It is. I believe it violated the Constitution. And really attempted to set policy and not follow the law, ” Sessions replied, adding this: “It is the law of the land…and it deserves respect, and I would respect it and followed it.”
The preparation paid off and made Sessions look in command and confident. But it didn’t hurt that the scene around the hearing was something of a left-wing circus. Code Pink, the implacable anti-war protest group that has made interrupting congressional events into performance art, filled a few rows. A smaller group of marijuana legalization activists took over a row as well, donning (for some reason) red Phyrgian caps and telling anyone who would listen that they’d been in line for the hearing since 4:20 in the morning. There were other activists peppered throughout the audience, from immigration advocates to anti-Trumpers yelling about fascism. Oh, and Al Sharpton showed up for a few minutes, too, surveying the room as the hearing rolled on.
When Sessions entered the hearing and shook hands with those who had come to lend their support—former attorney general Ed Meese, Alabama attorney general Luther Strange, and Ohio attorney general (and former U.S. senator) Mike DeWine among them—a pair of Code Pink members threw on KKK-style white robes and began shouting in exaggerated Southern accents. “Jefferson Beauregard,” they said, using the senator’s first and middle name. “You speak for the people!” Some variation of this happened intermittently throughout the hearing— “No Trump, No KKK, No fascist USA!” was a favorite chant—with each protestor quickly getting the boot by Capitol police in short order.
By early afternoon, the protest movement’s energy had drained. At a random moment around three hours in, a man stood up, gave a halfhearted “Jeff Sessions is a racist!” and promptly submitted himself to the officer to be escorted out. By then, the Code Pink crowd that had not been removed from the hearing for disruption had left on their own volition. So had Al Sharpton.
