Here come the rewrites of Jeff Sessions’ pathetic history.
Already, the apologists and conservatives have begun to mold Sessions’ as a rule-of-law stalwart, a steadying force, a letter-of-the-law stickler for truth and justice.
He stood up to Trump.
He protected Robert Mueller.
He was brave and honorable and dignified, and most of all, he followed the letter of the law, because Jeff Sessions is a good person.
Here’s the truth about Jeff Sessions: He’s a horrible person who has no qualms about laws being broken or U.S. citizens being abused and tortured and wrongly imprisoned, and innocent men being put to death, so long as the victims of those atrocities are not white.
The damage he did at the U.S. Department of Justice will take a generation to undo. And he made sure to do more on his way out the door.
In a sign of just how awful and vindictive and racist he is, in one of his last acts, as he was being dragged out the door towards his North Korea-like forced-applause send-off, Sessions signed a memorandum that, according to the New York Times, sharply limits the use of consent decrees to curb police misconduct.
Those decrees — reached after investigations uncover abuses in police departments and enforced by federal courts — have been used in recent times to address departments with long, sordid histories of abuses, particularly abuses of poor and minority citizens.
The decrees are essentially agreements between the Department of Justice and the departments in question, and they require the departments to make broad changes and show improvements.
For example, in Baltimore, following a number of well-documented scandals, including the death of Freddie Gray, and riots, the department asked the DOJ to investigate and recommend changes. That investigation turned up widespread abuses and unconstitutional behavior by officers, and the DOJ and department reached an agreement to make several changes. Among the changes were things like enhanced training in de-escalation techniques, training in community policing tactics and changes to rules about when and how officers could engage with citizens and suspects.
Let me stress again: These agreements were reached AFTER an investigation found and documented hundreds of instances of abuse. Including the wrongful death of suspects, the beating of innocent citizens, allegations of theft and multiple violations of constitutional rights of citizens.
But that didn’t matter to Sessions.
What did matter was that the majority of the victims were minorities.
No matter the situation, no matter the injustice, if it happens to a person of color, Sessions is incapable of empathy or of simply doing the right thing. And this is not new for him.
He acted similarly when he was Alabama’s AG. He did and said racist things while a federal prosecutor in Alabama. He was no better as this state’s senator. And he’s been an embarrassment as AG.
But some people now want to give him a pass because he did one right thing and recused from the Russia investigation.
That’s what he was supposed to do. He was the AG. He was supposed to follow the law.
Sessions doesn’t get rewarded for doing the absolute bare minimum. He doesn’t get to be recast as a hero because he wasn’t awful this one time.
And if you’re inclined to think otherwise, remember the story of Laquan McDonald.
Four years ago, police in Chicago shot and killed McDonald. At the time of the shooting, he was walking away from the cops. They shot him 16 times.
The official story from police, however, was that McDonald had “lunged” at them and they feared for their lives. They told the public he was shot once.
At least 20 cops in the department knew the story was a lie. Multiple cops in the department, including senior and high-ranking officers, signed off on it, repeated it and turned a blind eye.
The department turned away witnesses, tried to destroy video evidence, and lied repeatedly about the incident.
The cop who shot McDonald had a history of abuse dating back years. Abuses that had done little to stop his upward climb in the department.
The subsequent DOJ investigation found widespread abuses within the Chicago PD. It found multiple instances of officers violating the constitutional rights of citizens, sometimes through physical assaults, and facing little or no discipline for their actions. And it found a climate that would support an entire department lying to cover up a murder.
Jeff Sessions knew of these findings. And of ones in other departments. And still, on his way out the door, his last act was to pull the thin rug from under the feet of citizens abused and murdered by the police.
That’s who Jeff Sessions is.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
