Trump Taps Sen. Jeff Sessions For Attorney General

And Ted Cruz gets frozen out. Via Politico:

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to announce later on Friday that he has offered the job of attorney general to Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, while retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn has been offered the post of White House national security adviser, and Rep. Mike Pompeo has been offered CIA director, according to transition official Sean Spicer.

Sessions, one of Trump’s earliest and most prominent supporters in Congress, met with Trump at his home office in New York on Thursday, another transition team source said. The job offers mark the most solid signs of progress yet in Trump’s transition effort.

More from CNN:

It was 30 years ago that Sessions was denied a federal judgeship. At the time, he was a 39-year-old US attorney in Alabama. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU “un-American.”

Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him “boy” on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were “OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.”

On why he never spoke up against Sessions’ alleged use of the term, Figures testified: “I felt that if I had said anything or reacted in a manner in which I thought appropriate, I thought I would be fired.” Sessions angrily denied the allegations at the time. His office did not respond to a recent request for comment.

Don’t be surprised if Cruz reappears as a potential SCOTUS nominee despite Kellyanne Conway’s claim that Trump is committed to the previously issued list of 21 candidates.