A former federal prosecutor tells us what it’s like to watch Jeff Sessions be the Attorney General.

I guess I tried to put out of my mind that Jeff Sessions, the hand-picked Trump-appointed attorney general, lost his nomination for a federal judgeship in the 1980s because of racist remarks he’d made while working at the Alabama U.S. attorney’s office. And, it’s only recently that I learned of Sessions’ claim that the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP are “un-American,” and that he voted as a senator against hate crime bills, the Violence Against Women Act, and Loretta Lynch as attorney general because President Barack Obama’s nominees had “ACLU DNA.”

Against the backdrop of Sessions’ historical

Swamp.

Here's Attorney General Jeff Sessions making a joke today about separating families (to laughter and applause) pic.twitter.com/j38Oyhd313

— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) June 26, 2018

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Jeff Sessions gave a speech at the conservative Christian law firm the Alliance Defending Freedom, in which he promised new guidelines on “religious freedom.” We know what that means when someone like Jeff Sessions says it.

When the speech at Alliance Defending Freedom’s Summit on Religious Liberty appeared on the Attorney General’s public schedule, it was cause for concern among LGBTQ advocacy groups and Democrats — many of whom issued statements questioning why Sessions would speak to what some call an anti-LGBTQ hate group due to its history of litigating against LGBTQ rights.

But after reading the transcript and learning of the Justice Department’s plans to create a new federal policy on protecting religious liberties and doubling

Sessions is stonewalling.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered an indignant defense on Tuesday against what he called “an appalling and detestable lie” that he may have colluded with the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election, showcasing his loyalty to President Trump in an often contentious Senate hearing but declining to answer central questions about his or the president’s conduct.

Sounding by turns defiant and wounded, Mr. Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, often infused his testimony with more emotion than specifics. He insisted repeatedly that it would be “inappropriate” to discuss his private conversations with the president, however relevant they might be, visibly frustrating senators who have been conducting their own inquiry into Russia’s election meddling.

This … Read the rest

Jeff Sessions is evil. While Donnie Twoscoops flounders around in his own ever-proliferating messes, Jefferson Beauregard is taking care of business.

Even amid the scandal of the firing of FBI director James Comey—an action in which Sessions himself had a central part—Sessions has quietly continued the radical remaking of the Justice Department he began when he took the job.

On May 20, Sessions completed his first hundred days as attorney general. His record thus far shows a determined effort to dismantle the Justice Department’s protections of civil rights and civil liberties. Reversing course from the Obama Justice Department on virtually every front, he is seeking to return us not just to the pre-Obama era but to the pre-civil-rights era.

Ah the joys of having an unregenerate racist as Attorney General.

Jeff Sessions on Sunday declined to apologize for his controversial remarks about Hawaii this week, which the attorney general dismissed as “an island in the Pacific” while criticising a judge’s decision to block Donald Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority nations.

“Nobody has a sense of humour any more,” Jeff Sessions said in an interview with ABC’s This Week, two days after he told CNN: “I wasn’t criticising the judge or the island.”

Speaking to CNN, Sessions added: “I think it’s a fabulous place and had a granddaughter born there. But I got to tell you, it’s a point worth making that a single sitting judge out

It’s almost as if the Attorney General is supposed to be especially punctilious about not breaking laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an ethics complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his testimony to a Senate committee that he had no communications with the Russian government.

The complaint, filed with the Alabama State Bar’s disciplinary commission, comes less than two weeks after The Washington Post revealed that Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice last year and did not disclose those communications when asked during his confirmation hearing in January.

Well you see he didn’t know they meant that kind of communications with the Russian government. He thought they meant the other kind. He didn’t … Read the rest

Also – why can’t Jeff Sessions swear in like a normal person? What’s with that ridiculous way out to the side and way up in the air arm-raise?

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Richard Painter explains why Jeff Sessions should be fired.

He points out that we’ve been here before:

In 1972 Richard G. Kleindienst, the acting attorney general, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a confirmation hearing on his nomination by President Richard Nixon to be attorney general. He was to replace Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who had resigned to run Nixon’s re-election campaign (and who would later be sent to prison in the Watergate scandal).

Several Democratic senators were concerned about rumors of White House interference in a Justice Department antitrust suit against International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, a campaign contributor to the Republican National Committee. They asked Kleindienst several times if he had ever spoken with anyone

Elijah Cummings put it clearly:

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, put out a written statement, declaring, “It is inconceivable that even after Michael Flynn was fired for concealing his conversations with the Russians that Attorney General Sessions would keep his own conversations secret for several more weeks.” Cummings said Sessions’s statement denying contact “was demonstrably false, yet he let it stand for weeks — and he continued to let it stand even as he watched the President tell the entire nation he didn’t know anything about anyone advising his campaign talking to the Russians.” He concluded, “Attorney General Sessions should resign immediately, and there is no longer any

Matt Zapotosky and Mark Berman at the Washington Post point out a touch of hypocrisy or double standarding in Jeff “lied to Congress” Sessions:

Sessions served as a senator for two decades, and he was an outspoken surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. Because of that, he has talked extensively on all the topics for which he now faces criticism — lying under oath, the importance of meetings, handling sensitive investigations and even correcting the Congressional record. He was particularly critical of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and spoke extensively about the investigation of her use of a private email server while Secretary of State.

They found examples of his stated views on items like lying under oath.

After

Well great. Brilliant. The new US Attorney General lied at his confirmation hearing. Just what we need: a lying corrupt racist Attorney General, working for the most authoritarian and corrupt administration we’ve ever had.

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

That should be it. Fire him. Never mind recusing himself, he should be gone.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s