Donald Trump has named Alabama senator Jeff Sessions the attorney general of the United States, officials close to the president-elect’s transition team tell The New York Times.
Sessions, 69 — a staunch conservative who endorsed Trump, 70, early on in his campaign — has become a key advisor for the ex–Celebrity Apprentice host as he readies his impending takeover of the Oval Office this January.
While Sessions was selected as the attorney general, The New York Times reports that he was also considered as the secretary of defense, a position that remains open.
Sessions, who once worked as a prosecutor, was elected into the Senate in 1996. He currently serves on the Judiciary Committee and is known for his opposition to immigration reform and his objection to bipartisan proposals to cut mandatory minimum prison sentences.
According to The New York Times, Sessions was nominated in 1986 by the late president Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship. However, his nomination was rejected because of racially charged comments he made in the past. At the time, Sessions’ nomination was only one of two to be rejected by the panel in nearly 50 years.
The New York Times also reports that Sessions has previously branded civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.”
According to the newspaper, Thomas H. Hughes — an African American prosecutor — claimed that Sessions once referred to him as “boy” and said that the Alabama native thought the Ku Klux Klan was fine “until [he] found out they smoked pot.” Sessions later insisted that his comment about the KKK was made in jest.
Trump’s appointment of Sessions comes on the heels of the business mogul’s controversial decision to select Steve Bannon as the next White House strategist despite his association with white nationalist, anti-Semite and alt-right advocates.