The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite fierce debate about his civil rights record and Democratic concern over whether he serves as the nation’s top law enforcement officer independent from US President Donald Trump.
Lawmakers greenlighted the senator as the 84th US attorney general on a mostly party line vote of 52 to 47, with one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voting with the Republican majority.
When the tally was announced, many senators broke into extended applause for their colleague.
Photo: AFP
Trump has harangued Democrats for slow-walking his nominees, calling their unprecedented obstruction a “disgrace.”
“Congratulations to our new attorney general,” Trump tweeted shortly after the vote.
Sessions is just the sixth of 15 Cabinet members to be confirmed, in addition to the Cabinet-rank positions of CIA director and US ambassador to the UN.
He takes charge of the US Department of Justice and its 113,000 employees amid a swirling legal debate over Trump’s executive order temporarily blocking refugee arrivals and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Debate over Sessions was acrimonious and personal.
On Tuesday night, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rebuked Senator Elizabeth Warren for reading a letter written by the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr that criticized Sessions’ civil rights record.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said of Warren’s violation of the chamber’s rules of decorum.
Senator Sherrod Brown expressed concern about Sessions in light of Trump’s executive order.
“We need an attorney general who will be an independent voice beholden to the constitution and the American people, not the president,” Brown said.
Sessions, 70, was a Trump supporter who became a pivotal figure in his campaign and his transition team.
Sessions grew up in Alabama. He was a US prosecutor from 1981 to 1993, before serving as the state’s attorney general. He won a seat in the US Senate in 1996.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Democrats attacked his civil rights record, but he denied the accusations.
Shortly after his confirmation he sought to assuage concerns about how he would run the department.
“I fully understand the august responsibilities of that office,” he said.
Sessions also recognized the heated US political debate since Trump’s election victory and urged Americans to come together.
“Our nation does have room for Republicans and Democrats,” he said.
Senate Democrat Chris Murphy said he was “scared” about changes Sessions could bring.
Sessions’ “history of opposing civil rights, anti-gun-violence measures and immigration reform makes him uniquely ill-fitted to serve” as attorney general, Murphy said.
“I want a chief law enforcement official that will be a champion of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, not a defender of discrimination and nativism,” he said.
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