Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo
President-Elect Donald Trump on Friday offered US Senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions the attorney general post in his cabinet, according to CBS News.
He also offered Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo the top CIA post, the Associated Press and other news outlets reported. Pompeo accepted the position, NBC News reported.
Trump met with Sessions, a Republican, at Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday, and was pleased with his past experience, according to a statement from his transition team.
“While nothing has been finalized and he is still talking with others as he forms his cabinet, the President-elect has been unbelievably impressed with Senator Sessions and his phenomenal record as Alabama's Attorney General and US Attorney,” the statement read.
“It is no wonder the people of Alabama re-elected him without opposition.”
Pompeo, who is a three-term Kansas representative, is one of the most vocal critics of the Obama administration's deal with Iran that eased oil and financial sanctions on the country in exchange for dismantling large portions of its nuclear program.
He also served on the House Select Benghazi Committee where he wrote additional reports on Hillary Clinton, criticizing her actions as Secretary of State during the 2012 attack in Libya that killed four Americans. "Before, during and after the attacks of September 11th, 2012 in Benghazi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put politics ahead of people, pulling out all the stops to cover up the fact that she didn’t act when American lives were on the line," Pompeo wrote in his report.
After the Boston Marathon bombing, Pompeo blamed Islamic leaders in the US for not condemning acts of terrorism in the country and for being "potentially complicit" in those acts.
Sessions, who was among the first US senators to endorse the president-elect, served as Alabama attorney general in 1994 and was elected to the US Senate in 1996.
In 1986, when he was a US attorney, Sessions ran for a federal judge position but was ultimately rejected after employees and other colleagues alleged that he had made racist statements about civil rights groups.
Thomas Figures, who at the time worked in Sessions’ office, testified at one of the 1986 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that Sessions had called organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “un-American.”
Figures, who is black, also said that Sessions had called him “boy” on multiple occasions, and made jokes about the Ku Klux Klan.
He said that he did not come forward about Sessions’ statements earlier because he feared retaliation.
"I felt that if I had said anything or reacted in a manner in which I thought appropriate, I thought I would be fired,” he said at the hearing, according to CNN.
Sessions denied the allegations, but the Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately voted against his appointment, 10-8.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2gnfQFy
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