The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Embattled US Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a wily politician from the old South who cannily rose from federal prosecutor in Alabama to the US Senate and then helped propel Donald Trump to the White House.
But less than one month into the job as the country’s top law enforcement official, Sessions finds himself under heavy pressure over contacts he had last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, which took place while Moscow allegedly conducted an operation to aid Trump’s successful presidential bid.
The genteel Republican, 70, was facing Democrats’ calls to resign because he denied having had any contacts with Russians in his confirmation hearing in January.
Trump said Thursday that he had “total” confidence in Sessions. But he was also under pressure from both parties to recuse himself from any Justice Department investigations into Russia’s interference in the election.
Sessions, whose steadfast good-natured demeanor masks any possible sign of stress, has survived such pressure before, whether battling accusations of racism for his work as a prosecutor in Alabama, or advocating an unpopular anti-immigrant agenda in Congress that has now become a centerpiece of Trump policies.
Sessions grew up in Alabama, in the segregated South. He was a US prosecutor from 1981 to 1993, where his handling of several controversial cases saw him labeled racist by African-Americans.
In 1986 his nomination by president Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship sparked a tide of anger from African-Americans that led to his rejection.
Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., said in a letter objecting to his nomination that Sessions had used his powers to “intimidate and frighten” elderly black voters. Others assailed him for having made racist remarks about blacks.
But he kept his ambitions intact, rising to Alabama state attorney general and then, in 1996, winning election to represent the state in the US Senate. He stayed there until this year, when he quit to join the Trump government.
In his confirmation hearings he was again forced to endure attacks by Democrats on his civil rights record and alleged racist comments back in his earlier positions. “This caricature of me from 1986 was not correct,” he insisted to a Senate panel.
