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Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is hoping people will accept a whitewashed version of his record as he seeks Senate confirmation to be attorney general:
Sessions, 69, returned his questionnaire to the [Senate Judiciary Committee] amid little fanfare late last Friday evening. The former U.S. attorney and attorney general for the state of Alabama dutifully listed his employment record. But under a section asking for "any unsuccessful candidacies you have had for elective office or unsuccessful nominations for appointed offices," Sessions didn't mention his failed bid for a federal judge post.
You can’t even really slap this one with a sarcastic “nice try.” It would be a sarcastically nice try if it had a little hope of working and someone caught it. This is just ludicrous. The man is a senator today because the Senate Judiciary Committee, circa 1986, decided he was too racist to be a federal judge, and now he is trying to get the Senate Judiciary Committee to overlook that episode?
That’s not all:
Feinstein pointed out that Sessions still hasn't turned over complete information on which Republican candidates he has endorsed over the years. Nor, she wrote, has he turned over several speeches he gave on behalf of Trump on the campaign trail.
"These events, which happened only very recently, obviously are highly relevant to Senator Sessions' ability and intent to serve as an independent Attorney General," Feinstein wrote. "It also appears there are other missing speeches, such as a speech at an event called 'Restoration Weekend' from 2003 and a speech at a Federation for American Immigration Reform event in 2007."
If Republicans want to put someone too racist to be a federal judge in 1986 in charge of civil rights enforcement in 2016, Democrats damn well better be demanding everything he’s said publicly and looking hard at ways to find out what he’s been saying privately, too. If Sessions thinks he can get something as well-known as his judicial rejection overlooked, there’s no telling what else he’s trying to hide.