Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General of the U.S., Senator Jeff Sessions, was grilled by his fellow senators during a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington DC today.
Sessions was grilled about his civil rights record, gay marriage and LGBT issues, birth control, immigration and more. Tuesday’s hearing was the first of 2 hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Protesters from the left wing group “Code Pink” disrupted the hearing multiple times, especially during the senator’s opening remarks and all throughout the hearing.
As Sessions entered the hearing, 2 protesters wearing white robes and hoods stood on their chairs and shouted at him. The men pretended to be members of the hate group Ku Klux Klan, who are reportedly supportive of Sessions and Trump.
“What is this craziness? I’m a white man!” said one of the protesters to several black officers who dragged them from the chamber. “You cannot take me out of here! I own this country! White people own this government!”
So many protesters were dragged or carried out of Tuesday’s hearing, that Sessions joked, “If nothing else I’m clearing the room for you.”
The sheer number of protesters at Tuesday’s hearing led some observers to accuse the Democrats of helping Code Pink to disrupt the Democratic process.
To prove he was not racist, Senator Sessions introduced his daughter, her Asian husband and their 4 beautiful mixed race daughters.
As a senator in Alabama in the 1980s, Sessions once joked that he liked the KKK until he found out they smoked pot. The joke was brought up again in 1986 when Sessions was rejected as a federal judge. Sessions was deemed too racist to be a sitting federal judge at the time.
But others point out that Sessions has a 30-year commitment to civil rights issues. Condoleezza Rice and a contingent of black pastors came out in support of Sessions Tuesday morning.
The Alabama Senator sits on the same panel as the senators who are grilling him during the confirmation hearings. In other words, Senator Sessions is among friends.
Interestingly, Sessions said he would recuse himself if a criminal case involving Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation came across his desk.
Senator Cory Booker is scheduled to testify against Senator Sessions on Wednesday. It will be the first time in history that a sitting senator testifies against another sitting senator during a confirmation hearing,
