Read the Coretta Scott King Letter That Got Elizabeth Warren Silenced by the Senate
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was censured on the floor of the Senate Tuesday night for criticizing Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), nominated to serve as President Donald Trump’s attorney general.
Only Warren wasn’t criticizing Sessions in her own words. She was quoting the wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1986, when Sessions was being considered for a federal judgeship, Coretta Scott King wrote to the Senate to urge them to reject his nomination. And she did not mince words.
In a letter obtained by the Washington Post earlier this year, King took on Sessions’s record as a federal prosecutor, particularly the faulty charges he pursued to go after a local civil rights activist who signed up black voters.
“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,” King wrote. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”
More: Read the Coretta Scott King letter that got Elizabeth Warren silenced by the Senate