One of President Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is bringing a lifetime of conservative thinking to the highest legal office in the United States as Attorney General.

Like many of Trump’s cabinet appointments, Sessions’ confirmation was rife with controversy and he was narrowly confirmed with a vote split along party lines. Sessions, who began public service in 1975 as Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama, has long been criticized for his civil rights record.

As Attorney General, he has already been a key player in major immigration and LGBTQ rights regulations.

Sessions was first embroiled in controversy in 1986 when he was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan to be a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

During confirmation, numerous former colleagues came forward to decry Sessions for racist behavior and a poor record in civil rights cases, according to The Washington Post. Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, wrote a letter at that time about Sessions’ record as an attorney in Alabama. In it, King wrote that Sessions “used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.”

That letter would again ignite controversy for Sessions during his confirmation hearing for Attorney General earlier this year. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) attempted to read the letter aloud on the Senate floor during the days-long debate over Sessions.

Before she could finish, though, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) enacted a rarely used Senate rule that states no senator can defame another on the floor and prevented her from continuing.

With public outcry after the incident, Democrats rallied around Warren and continued the debate about Sessions into the next day. Eventually, other Senators, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), read the entire letter without being stopped.

Despite the issues in 1986 that nearly sidelined Sessions’ career, he blazed onto the political scene in February 2016 when he first stepped on stage at a Trump campaign rally, declaring his allegiance to the then-candidate, according to The Washington Post. Because of this early commitment, Sessions was influential in Trump’s transition, particularly with the formation of the president’s immigration policy.

“I told Donald Trump this isn’t a campaign, this is a movement,” Sessions said at the time, per The Washington Post.

Sessions has maintained a tough stance against immigration throughout his political career. He has consistently voted against providing pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and has often argued for limiting legal immigration, per the BBC.

In his 2016 report “Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority,” Sessions wrote that immigration was responsible for a damaged job market and welfare dependency, according to the BBC.

The new Attorney General is also expected to be tough on marijuana legalization and transgender rights. Already, he has worked with Trump to roll back a rule that allowed transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.

The New York Times reported that Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, was initially resistant to the change, which required her approval, but Sessions and Trump pushed her to eventually sign off.

During the 1986 confirmation hearing, Sessions also came under fire for a comment about the Klu Klux Klan that was telling about Sessions’ distaste for marijuana. Sessions said the KKK were OK “until I learned they smoked pot,” which he later said was made as a joke, per The Washington Post.

Throughout Sessions’ career, though, he has been vocal against legalizing marijuana, which goes against a nationwide trend: Currently, 29 states have legalized medical marijuana and 65 million Americans live in states where recreational marijuana use is legal, per Politico Magazine.

Sessions has criticized his predecessors Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch for not strictly enforcing the federal prohibition on marijuana, per Politico. It is Sessions’ primary duty to enforce federal law and it is within his power to prosecute those who have participated in the marijuana industry on the state level.

Published on March 27, 2017 at 9:11 pm

Contact Delaney: dovanwey@syr.edu