Jeff Sessions Wanted to ‘Drop the Case’ Against KKK Lynching, Attorney Testified
Trump’s attorney-general pick allegedly signaled an assistant U.S. attorney working for him in the ’80s not to prosecute two whites who murdered a black man.
Today
Jeff Sessions claims credit for prosecuting a lynching by the Ku Klux Klan as proof that he is not a racist, but an attorney working for him claimed 30 years ago his boss wanted to drop the case.
Figures's claims that Sessions made racist remarks have resurfaced recently, but overlooked is a more serious allegation that Sessions sought to go soft on investigating the lynching of a black man by two Klansmen.
Figures testified to several examples of his former boss’s alleged racial insensitivity before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying Sessions had once told him that “he believed the NAACP, the SCLC, Operation PUSH, and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.”
On one occasion, when Figures upbraided Sessions’s secretary over what he felt was an inappropriate personal comment she made to him, he said
Sessions had summoned him to his office and admonished him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” Figures was black.
Sessions and his supporters, then as now, defend his civil rights record based on several cases to which Figures was also assigned, including the conviction of Henry Hays for the 1981 ******* by lynching of Michael Donald.
“When I became a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, I, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Figures and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, worked to solve the [Donald] *******,” Sessions wrote in his response to the Judiciary Committee questionnaire for his AG nomination. “Because the federal government did not have an enforceable death penalty at the time, I insisted that Hays be prosecuted by the local district attorney.”
Sessions was questioned about the prosecution in 1986, days before Figures spoke to the committee, and told Senator Howell Heflin that he did not obstruct the investigation.
Figures said Sessions’s answer was “literally correct,” however, “in the early stages of the case, Mr. Sessions did attempt to persuade me to discontinue pursuit of the case,” calling it a waste of time and saying that “if the perpetrators were found, I would not be assigned to the case,” Figures testified.
“All of these statements were well calculated to induce me to drop the case,” Figures said, “on the other hand, none of them amounted to a direct order to drop the case.”
igures said Sessions’s answer was “literally correct,” however, “in the early stages of the case, Mr. Sessions did attempt to persuade me to discontinue pursuit of the case,” calling it a waste of time and saying that “if the perpetrators were found, I would not be assigned to the case,” Figures testified.
cut from a fact page on the daily beast!
don't get me wrong I am NOT defending Byrd!
but I think it would be pretty hard not to find a southern politician that wasn't some what against blacks......look at the florida gov race right now a good example
I live in a southern state right now...I see a lot of it...even from Dems...some who wouldn't vote for Obama because of his color...This city had the biggest mass ******* of blacks in the history of the country!
