Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The International Business Times reports:
The confirmation process for Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is “rigged” and should be delayed in order to thoroughly vet Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee, a group of civil rights leaders said in a conference call with reporters Friday.
Citing reports that Democrats will be allowed to call only four witnesses to testify at next week’s confirmation hearings, and noting that Sessions left hundreds of questions blank on a required questionnaire, the Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP president Cornell William Brooks and five other civil rights leaders representing black, Hispanic and Asian-American groups called for a more “thorough vetting” of Sessions’ controversial career, which included a failed nomination to the federal bench in 1986 due to accusations of racial bias.
“Rushing through this hearing…demonstrates a contempt for the need to probe Sen. Sessions’ record,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense And Education Fund. “The Senate Judiciary Committee cannot push this forward based on their friendship with Sen. Sessions.”
Sessions is a former member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a four-term senator. His rejected judgeship nomination in 1986 lasted three days and included dozens of witnesses by both sides. Sessions’ confirmation hearing next week is scheduled to last just two days.
The civil rights leaders also accused Sessions of hypocrisy for failing to disclose records covering many years. In 2010, he said one of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees could be charged with a felony for doing the same thing.
More from AL.com:
The rules set by Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, schedule Sessions’ hearings for two days, with one day mostly devoted to testimony from Sessions and the second day featuring testimony from nine witnesses — five called by Republicans and four called by Democrats. The witness lists are still being finalized; a Judiciary Committee spokeswoman told AL.com that the names should be made public on Monday, a day before the hearing.
After the two days of testimony, the 16-member committee will then vote whether to send Sessions’ nomination to the full Senate, where the senator will need a majority of members to confirm him to head the Justice Department.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the body, is pushing to delay the hearings in order to extend the confirmation process, allow the committee to call additional witnesses and gather more information so the committee can better judge Sessions, who has been criticized for handing the committee an incomplete questionnaire for review.
Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said the two-day hearings constitute a “rushed and rigged confirmation process.” Other anti-Sessions advocates pointed out that John Ashcroft, the first attorney general under George W. Bush — who, like Sessions, was a senator when he was being reviewed to head the Justice Department — faced four days of hearings and the committee heard from dozens of witnesses.
Several of Trump’s most prominent nominees, including Sessions, have their hearings scheduled for the same day that Trump will allegedly give his first press conference in six months. This is not a coincidence.