WASHINGTON — Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions fervently rejected “damnably false” accusations of past racist comments Tuesday as he challenged Democratic concerns about the civil rights commitment he would bring as Donald Trump’s attorney general. He vowed at his confirmation hearing to stay independent from the White House and stand up to Trump when necessary.
Sessions laid out a sharply conservative vision for the Justice Department he would oversee, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration, gun violence and the “scourge of radical Islamic terrorism” and to keep open the Guantanamo Bay prison.
But he also distanced himself from some of Trump’s public pronouncements. He said waterboarding, a now-banned harsh interrogation technique that Trump has at times expressed support for, was “absolutely improper and illegal.”
Though he said he would prosecute immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and criticized as constitutionally “questionable” an executive action by President Obama that shielded some immigrants from deportation, he said he did “not support the idea that Muslims, as a religious group, should be denied admission to the United States.”
Sessions asserted that he could confront Trump if needed, saying an attorney general must be prepared to resign if asked to do something “unlawful or unconstitutional.”
Nothing new came out of the hearing that seemed likely to threaten Sessions’ confirmation by the Republican Senate. Yet as he outlined his priorities, his past — including a 1986 judicial nomination that failed amid allegations that he’d made racially charged comments — hovered over the proceedings. Protesters calling Sessions a racist repeatedly and were hustled out by Capitol police.
Sessions vigorously denied he had ever called the NAACP “un-American.” He said he had never harbored racial animus, calling the allegations — which included that he had referred to a black attorney in his office as “boy” — part of a false caricature. “It wasn’t accurate then,” Sessions said. “It isn’t accurate now.”
He said he “understands the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters. I have witnessed it.”
Sessions, known as one of the most staunchly conservative members of the Senate, smiled amiably as he began his presentation, taking time to introduce his grandchildren, joking about Alabama football and making self-deprecating remarks about his strong Southern accent. He has solid support from the Senate’s Republican majority and from some Democrats in conservative-leaning states.
But he faces a challenge persuading skeptical Democrats that he’ll be fair and committed to civil rights, a chief priority of the Justice Department during the Obama administration, as the country’s top law enforcement official.