Khizr Khan: ‘Americans deserve better’ than Sessions for AG

Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq, is urging lawmakers not to confirm Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general.

“I am writing to urge you, out of respect for the American values enshrined in the Constitution, not to confirm Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general of the United States,” he wrote in a Monday letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

“Thirty years ago, a bipartisan group of senators rejected Mr. Sessions’ nomination to be a federal judge,” Khan added. “His record since then does not give us any reason to believe that those senators were in error. Mr. Sessions has confirmed their concerns and raised additional ones.

{mosads}“The most minimal standard for leading the Department of Justice must be a demonstrated commitment to pursuing justice for all Americans. Mr. Sessions fails to meet that standard. Americans deserve better.”

Khan called on Republican senators to give Sessions a tough vetting, saying that an “incomplete and less than thorough hearing” would compromise their “moral authority in our legislative system.”

“Mr. Sessions has defended proposals that would single Muslim immigrants out for discriminatory treatment on the basis of their religious beliefs,” he said in the letter. “[Sessions] has happily accepted awards from the most intensely anti-Muslim organizations and groups that spread the vile falsehood that Muslims cannot be loyal Americans. This is not the American way.”

Sessions’s confirmation hearing starts Tuesday and could be a contentious affair. Critics have attacked Sessions’s record on issues including criminal justice reform, voting rights and immigration.

Khizr Khan earned national prominence after a passionate speech over the summer at the Democratic National Convention about his son, Humayun Khan, a U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq in 2004.

The elder Khan waved his pocket copy of the Constitution and fiercely denounced then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims.