Democrats voice concerns over Trump's attorney general selection

Democrats voiced their concerns over President-elect Donald Trump's selection Friday of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for the nation's next Attorney General.

Sessions was the first U.S. Senator to endorse Donald Trump. The 69-year-old is one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate and shares the President-elect's hardline stance on undocumented immigrants.

"America can't continue to bring in labor to do work and subsidize people who are not working by the millions," Sessions said.

Conservatives including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, applauded the choice of Sessions.

"I think he will make an excellent Attorney General. He is a strong, principled conservative," Cruz said.

Sessions is a four-term U.S. Senator, who previously served as a U.S. attorney and Alabama Attorney General.

When nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986, however, allegations emerged that Sessions said the Ku Klux Klan was ok, until he learned they smoked marijuana.

He also was accused of using a racial slur about a black elected official and calling a black Assistant U.S. Attorney "boy".

Sessions denied the accusations but withdrew from consideration.

"Look he's going to need a very thorough vetting.  Many of those statements, they're old but they're still troubling. And the idea that Jeff Session is...just because he's a Senator he should get through without a series of very tough questions, particularly given those early...early things, no way," said New York Senator Charles Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader-elect.

U.C. Berkeley School of Law Professor Christopher Kutz says if Sessions is confirmed, there could be a 180-degree change in the Justice Department's position on many key issues.

"The Attorney General's views on what the law permits the President to do by way of policy and what the law requires the President to do by way of policy are crucial to policy-making across a whole range of areas," Kutz said.

Professor Kutz notes that Sessions has supported keeping the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba open.

He also says that Sessions could take a very different approach from the current Justice Department on investigating complaints of racially biased policing. The Justice Department under the Obama administration opened 23 investigations of law enforcement agencies, including police departments in Baltimore, Chicago and Ferguson, Missouri, for unconstitutional practices and has reached court-enforceable consent decrees with many of them. It sued North Carolina over a bathroom bill it said discriminated against transgender individuals, and has challenged state voting laws that it said disenfranchised minority voters.

"The reach of the Justice Department also extends in direct and indirect ways to supervision over a lot of local law enforcement, so the Attorney General has an unparalleled reach. The Attorney General is also an extremely influential figure in U.S. intelligence," Kutz said.

Supporters of Sessions point to his vote to confirm the nation's first black U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Sessions' co-sponsorship of the Fair Sentencing Act, which aimed at reducing racial disparities in how drug offenders are treated.

Sessions appointment to the Attorney General position will need to be confirmed by the Senate.