Sessions Tapped as Attorney General
BREAKING THIS MORNING — SESSIONS TAPPED AS ATTORNEY GENERAL: President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general, according to transition official Sean Spicer. As Trump’s first Senate supporter and close adviser during the campaign, the four-term Republican senator effectively had his pick of Cabinet posts in the new administration.
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Sessions was bandied about for defense secretary or secretary of homeland security, but ultimately his focus in the Senate on illegal immigration — and hard-line views that align with Trump’s — led him to be selected to lead the Justice Department. But Sessions’ confirmation is likely to be a fight, even though he’s a senator, and it could turn ugly. His critics are expected to seize on his failed confirmation three decades ago, when the Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination over accusations he had called the NAACP “un-American” and addressed a black lawyer as “boy.”