*Capitol police officers have been very busy this morning removing multiple protesters attempting to disrupt Sen. Jeff Sessions‘ confirmation hearing for attorney general.
As members of the judicial committee were giving their opening speeches, multiple protesters – from CodePink, to folks dressed mockingly in KKK uniforms – began standing up and shouting him down in the chamber.
Code Pink is in the house for Sessions’ confirmation hearing, as are some folks with GREAT AMERICANS USE CANNABIS t-shirts. Fun times. pic.twitter.com/fiPX4EOpTX
— Sam Baker (@sam_baker) January 10, 2017
As Sessions began his opening statement, at least three people stood at separate times to yell, “No Trump! No KKK in the USA!,” and other statements calling attention to Sessions’ past allegations of racism. (Those allegations ended up derailing his appointment to a federal judgeship in the 1980s.)
Watch below:
Protesters taken out of Sessions hearing as Sessions makes his opening statement pic.twitter.com/WWkrYaMnJG
— Bridget Bowman (@bridgetbhc) January 10, 2017
Capitol Police remove Code Pink protester who laughed when Shelby said Sessions has worked to protect all Americans pic.twitter.com/VZn3DgrYzl
— Bridget Bowman (@bridgetbhc) January 10, 2017
In 1986 when President Reagan nominated him to be a federal judge, Sessions’ found confirmation resistance due to comments he had made that some people found racially insensitive and a voter fraud case he had prosecuted as U.S. attorney in Alabama.
Sessions was working with Justice Department lawyers on a 1983 investigation into a Ku Klux Klan murder of a black teenager. When Sessions learned that the Klan members had been smoking weed the night of the lynching, he said, “I used to respect them, but if they smoke pot, I sure can’t,” according to a Justice Department lawyer at the time. Of the three lawyers who heard Sessions’ comment, two said they believed it was a joke, which is how Sessions testified he meant it to be interpreted. The third, who is black, said he was offended and took it as a serious comment.
Another issue that came up in Sessions’ 1986 hearing centered on a voter fraud case from the year earlier against the “Marion Three”: Albert Turner, a civil rights activist who advised Martin Luther King Jr, his wife Evelyn, and activist Spencer Hogue Jr. The case alleged that Turner and supporters were illegally altering votes on absentee ballots. The Marion Three say they were helping illiterate voters and only changed ballots when asked. Critics of Sessions claim the case is evidence that he tried to suppress black turnout in his home state, whereas he says the prosecution was legitimate and stemmed from complaints from black local officials. A jury acquitted the defendants of all charges.
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