Condoleezza Rice backs Sessions for AG: report

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she supports President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general.

“[Sessions] is a man who is committed to justice and knows that law and order are necessary to guarantee freedom and liberty,” she wrote in a Monday letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), according to CNN.

“I know that Sen. Sessions will uphold the laws of our great country and will work to ensure that every person here in the United States is given the voice that is deserved,” added Rice, who served under former President George W. Bush.

{mosads}Rice, who is from Alabama, added that Sessions has helped stop the “prejudice and injustice against the descendants of slaves” in their home state.

The former of secretary of State – and the first African-American woman to hold that role – also noted that Sessions rallied efforts to award the Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Critics of his nomination have hammered Sessions over accusations of racial bias, pointing to his failed nomination for a federal judgeship more than three decades ago as disqualifying for the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

The former Senate Judiciary Committee member will face his colleagues at confirmation hearings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. The Alabama senator’s confirmation process has the potential to become one of the most heated fights of Trump’s Cabinet picks.

Sessions’ nomination for a U.S. District Court judgeship in 1986 was withdrawn after witnesses testified he had made racially charged remarks, such as calling the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American.”

Supporters have countered such attacks are scaremongering that ignore Sessions’ work protecting civil and voting rights as Alabama’s former attorney general. Republicans who have served alongside Sessions have praised him, and many say he will receive the simple majority needed for confirmation.