Back in 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Jeff Sessions, who was then an assistant US attorney for the southern district of Alabama, to a seat on the federal district court. Ted Kennedy, womanizer, liar, agent for the Soviet Union, murderer of women and the US senator representing the alcoholic beverages industry Massachusetts decided to make an example of him.

At Sessions’s confirmation hearing he was pummeled with accusations that could not be proven or disproven. His record was distorted. He was labeled a racist. This is the mashup from Wikipedia:

At Sessions’ confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he made racially offensive remarks. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” because they “forced civil rights down the throats of people”.^[16] Hebert, a civil rights lawyer,^[17] said that he did not consider Sessions a racist, and that Sessions “has a tendency sometimes to just say something, and I believe these comments were along that vein.”^[18]

Thomas Figures, a black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot“. Sessions later said that the comment was not serious, but did apologize for it. Barry Kowalski, a prosecutor in the civil rights division, also heard the remark and testified that he considered it a joke. Kowalski later said that he considered Sessions to have been more welcoming to the work of the Civil Rights Division than many other Southern US Attorneys at the time.^[18][19] Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions “had a very spirited discussion regarding how the Hodge case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, ‘I wish I could decline on all of them,'” by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally. After becoming Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Sessions was asked in an interview about his civil rights record as a U.S Attorney. He denied that he had not sufficiently pursued civil rights cases, saying that “when I was [a U.S. Attorney], I signed 10 pleadings attacking segregation or the remnants of segregation, where we as part of the Department of Justice, we sought desegregation remedies”.^[20]

Figures also said that Sessions had called him “boy,” which Sessions denied. Figures also testified that two assistant prosecutors had also heard Sessions, including current federal judge Ginny Granade. Granade denied this.^[21][13] He also testified that “Mr. Sessions admonished me to ‘be careful what you say to white folks.'”^[22] In 1992, Figures was indicted by a federal grand jury with attempting to bribe a witness by offering a $50,000 to a convicted drug dealer who was to testify against his client. Figures claimed the indictment was in retaliation for his role in blocking Sessions nomination.^[23] Sessions was also reported to have called a white civil rights attorney a “disgrace to his race.”^[24]
Sessions responded to the testimony by denying the allegations, saying his remarks were taken out of context or meant in jest, and also stating that groups could be considered un-American when “they involve themselves in un-American positions” on foreign policy. Sessions said during testimony that he considered the Klan to be “a force for hatred and bigotry.” In regards to the marijuana quote, Sessions said the comment was a joke but apologized.^[19]

In response to a question from Joe Biden on whether he had called the NAACP and other civil rights organizations “un-American”, Sessions replied “I’m often loose with my tongue. I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or Communist, but I meant no harm by it.”^[15]

Note to complete flimsiness of the allegations that were carefully constructed to be impossible to attack on factual grounds. What resulted was a flurry of he-said-she-said accusations in which the number of unproven allegations gained a weight of their own.

Scarcely a year later Judge Robert Bork was nominated to the US Supreme court. Bork, by any conceivable standard, particularly one that put a Kagan or Sotomayor on the bench, was an incredibly qualified pick for the SCOTUS. Again, fat Teddy leaped to the attack and used the same strategy that he’d fine tuned on Sessions. A good man was smeared and the nation was punished with Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

In 1991, the same shameful attack plan was rolled out to try to defeat Clarence Thomas’s nomination.

Jeff Sessions’s nomination to be attorney general has caused radical islamists and progressive Democrats, to the extent that you can tell them apart these days, are going utterly batsh** crazy. Aging harpy and raging communist, Elizabeth Warren, beclowned herself as only such a creature can:

“Instead of embracing the bigotry that fueled his campaign rallies, I urge President-elect Trump to reverse his apparent decision to nominate Senator Sessions to be Attorney General of the United States,” Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “If he refuses, then it will fall to the Senate to exercise fundamental moral leadership for our nation and all of its people.”

What the left is attempting to do is to resurrect unproven and unprovable allegations from a hearing held thirty years ago in order to defeat a nomination for sh**s and grins. What is worse, Sessions’s true record in Alabama as an AUSA is being totally ignored. Jeff sessions aggressively worked to desegregate segregated housing. He prosecuted vote fraud back when progressives thought vote fraud was a bad thing because it kept black people from having a voice. He prosecuted the head of the Alabama Klan on capital charges and it became the only time in the 20th century that a Klan member was executed for the murder of a black man. This conviction opened the way for a multimillion dollar civil lawsuit that broke the back of the Alabama Klan.

Sessions is not a racist or a bigot. He has not been accused or suspected of being one since Ted Kennedy’s show trial. (Please click and read Erick Erickson’s classic Seriously Trump?!?! The Pictures of Jeff Sessions They Don’t Want You To See.) He was even right that the NAACP and ACLU received communist funding. He deserves to be confirmed. An I dearly hope he harbors a grudge over the way he’s been maligned and goes full metal Eric Holder on them.
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