There was a lot of talk that the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing for Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions would be an epic showdown, with Democrats slashing Sessions’ record and protesters turning the historic Russell Senate Office Building hearing room into a war zone.
The buzz in the minutes before the hearing seemed to suggest something was up. A group of protesters staged a brief sit-in in Sessions’ office just down the hall. Khizr Khan, center of a white-hot controversy with President-elect Trump last summer, showed up, talking with Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy. Al Sharpton came in, after Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee and others. A brightly dressed contingent from Code Pink took seats in the center of the spectator session.
But the epic showdown just didn’t happen. The Democratic questioners were sluggish and without focus; with one exception, their questions lacked the sting of an opposition party that really wants to bring down a nominee. And the protesters — well, they just didn’t bring their A game.
During breaks, the people who helped Sessions get ready for the confirmation noted that there had not been any questions Sessions had not anticipated or prepared for. That preparation showed. Yes, on the one hand, Democrats weren’t sharp. But on the other hand, Sessions smoothly handled questions that might have tripped up a less-prepared nominee.
Sessions himself made the most news when he volunteered that as attorney general he would recuse himself from any Justice Department investigation of Hillary Clinton, should one occur. He was an open partisan and often campaigned for Trump, Sessions told the committee, and “I do believe that would place my objectivity in question.” Therefore, “the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself in anything involving Secretary Clinton.”
Sessions also took on — before anyone had a chance to ask him about it — his 1986 confirmation hearings, in which the committee denied him a federal judgeship on the grounds that he was “racially insensitive.”
“I was accused in 1986 of failing to protect the voting rights of African-Americans…of condemning civil rights advocates and organizations, and even harboring, amazingly, sympathies for the KKK,” Sessions said. “These are damnably false charges.”
Sessions said all that before the first question of the hearing, which came from chairman Sen. Charles Grassley. Then came the Democrats — ranking minority Sen. Dianne Feinstein, followed by Leahy, Richard Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Al Franken, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and Mazie Hirono.
It’s not necessary to go down each line of questioning in detail, but the bottom line is that few, if any, laid a glove on Sessions.
Feinstein, in her first hearing as top committee Democrat, began with a question about human sex trafficking that was really about abortion. Perhaps the most significant part about her questioning was that it revealed that Sessions was determined to be direct and not do any dances in order to try to curry favor with senators who aren’t going to vote to confirm him anyway.
That became apparent when Feinstein asked, “You have referred to Roe v. Wade as, quote ‘One of the worst, most colossally erroneous Supreme Court decisions of all time. Is that still your view?”
Sessions’ answer: “It is.”
Yes, Sessions explained that Roe is the law of the land and that he would follow it, an assurance he repeated later in the day. But the moment showed a nominee in a very direct frame of mind.
Leahy questioned Sessions about Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” proposal. Durbin challenged Sessions on immigration, and then added, “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Well, you are wrong,” said Sessions. More directness.
Whitehouse, who some expected to be tough, went fairly easy on Sessions. Klobuchar asked some relatively soft questions about voter fraud. It was only when the turn came to Franken that real aggression made its way into the hearing.
Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” personality and left-wing radio host, grilled Sessions on whether Sessions misrepresented the number of civil rights cases he had handled when he was a Justice Department prosecutor in Alabama in the 1980s. Several years ago, Franken noted, Sessions claimed he had filed “20 or 30” cases, but the evidence doesn’t seem to support that. Sessions answered that he has since looked at the docket records from the time and that the real number was less than 20 or 30, although it was never clear just what that number was.
Franken based much of his questioning on a recent op-ed in the Washington Post headlined “We know Sessions is overstating his record,” by three former Justice Department civil rights lawyers. Franken’s issue seemed to be that Sessions had said he had “handled” the cases when in fact his name was on the legal filings but he might not have been active in other aspects of the case. Franken noted repeatedly that he, Franken, is not a lawyer, and indeed, he did not seem to appreciate the role U.S. attorneys play in cases pursued by their offices.
Franken’s attack was also undermined a bit by the fact that one of those former Justice Department lawyers who wrote the Post piece, Gerald Hebert, had been mistaken back in 1986 in one of the key accusations he lodged against Sessions. A little later in the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz used some of his time to remind the committee that Hebert had had to recant part of his testimony.
Afterward, the Sessions team pointed out that Democrats could have called Hebert to testify himself, but didn’t. “I think it’s really interesting the Democrats didn’t call Hebert today,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Sessions confirmation effort. “I assume they found the same credibility problems that we found.”
The bottom line was that the Sessions team didn’t think Franken landed any punches. But Franken at least cheered some observers who had wanted to see Democrats take it to Sessions. A journalist named Mark Harris tweeted that, “Al Franken is the first senator today to look and sound like he loathes Sessions and skip all the buddy-buddy crap. It is welcome.”
Coons, Blumenthal and Hirono were mostly unremarkable.
At that point, in the early afternoon, the energy seemed to have leaked out of the room, and out of the Democrats’ effort to stop Sessions.
For a moment, Mike Lee was the only senator present on the Republican side of the table, with Durbin the only inhabitant of the Democratic side. Coming back for another round, Leahy tried to be a bit tougher, asking Sessions about one of the most scandalous moments of the Trump campaign.
“Is grabbing a woman by the genitals without consent, is that sexual assault?” Leahy asked.
“Yes,” Sessions sensibly responded. And that was that.
Later in the afternoon, Cruz said he wanted to “commend” his Democratic colleagues for showing “admirable restraint” in a hearing that Cruz had worried “would turn ugly.”
“My friends on the Democratic side of the aisle have largely refrained from going down that road,” Cruz said in words that must have rankled some on the other side of the table.
Why did the showdown not live up to billing? There were various theories. Some thought that because the Democratic senators knew Sessions as a colleague — indeed, many had co-sponsored bills with Sessions or asked him for ordinary favors in the past — they just didn’t have the instinct to go for the jugular. Another theory suggested that since Republicans unanimously support Sessions, Democrats knew going in that there was no way they could stop him, and therefore didn’t have much heart for the fight. Another was that Sessions was so well prepared that he disarmed some would-be attackers. Whatever the reason, the much-anticipated big challenge to Sessions fell flat.
The Sessions hearing isn’t over. Sessions won’t be present, but on Wednesday, there will be two panels of witnesses to discuss his record. Democratic Sen. Cory Booker will become the first senator to testify against another senator in a confirmation hearing, so that will make some news. The other panel seems likely to be entirely about race.
But the fact is, it’s over. There will be far less attention to the panels Wednesday than to Sessions’ testimony Tuesday. There will be less media coverage, fewer protesters, less interest in general. Washington’s attention will move on.
Without the votes to win, Democrats and the activist groups that support them just didn’t bring the energy to the Sessions showdown. The first Senate confirmation battle of the Trump administration goes to Trump.
