Schumer Notes 'Troubling Things' in Record of Jeff Sessions, Trump's Attorney General Pick
"Like any nominee, he has to be questioned very carefully," Schumer said.
— -- Newly elected Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said there are "troubling things" in the record of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, and he will need to be "questioned very carefully" before he is confirmed as the next U.S. attorney general.
Sessions, whom President-elect Donald Trump named today as his choice to become the nation's top prosecutor and head of the Justice Department, was in 1986 denied confirmation for a U.S. district judgeship following allegations that he had called the ACLU and the NAACP "un-American" and made racist remarks directed at colleagues.
ABC's Martha Raddatz also noted to Schumer in an interview that will air Sunday on "This Week" that Sessions "was one of only four senators to vote against a Senate Judiciary Committee amendment that banned a religious test for immigrants.”
"These are troubling things, and the only fair thing to do is ask a lot of questions, very thorough questions and then make an opinion," Schumer said.
"Like any nominee he has to questioned very carefully, not only about his past but about his future," the New York senator said.
“One question I’d want to ask him, ‘What do you want to do with the Civil Rights Division?'” Schumer said.
Sessions was the first U.S. senator to officially endorse Trump for president in February during the Republican primary.