Senate

Eleven GOP senators sign open letter backing Sessions’s comeback bid

by Rachel Frazin - 11/08/19 1:25 PM ET

Eleven Republican senators have signed a letter in support of former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’s (R) bid to reclaim his old seat.

The “open letter to conservatives” touted the former attorney general as “a man of his word” and “devoted to serving the people of Alabama.”

“We believe Jeff Sessions has more to offer his country, and we believe the United States Senate will be better with his experience and leadership,” the senators added.

{mosads}The letter was signed by GOP Sens. Richard Shelby (Ala.), James Inhofe (Okla.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), John Boozman (Ark.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Deb Fischer (Neb.).

Barrasso and Blunt are the third and fourth highest ranking Republican senators, respectively.

Sessions on Thursday announced his bid for the Alabama Senate seat currently held by Sen. Doug Jones (D). Sessions previously represented Alabama in the Senate from 1997 to 2017.

Sessions left the Senate to serve as President Trump’s first attorney general and earned the president’s abiding disdain after he recused himself from the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russian election inference. Trump has repeatedly attacked Sessions both before and after he left the Justice Department, saying that Sessions’s selection was the worst mistake of his presidency.

“I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” Trump told Hill.TV in an exclusive interview in September of last year, less than two months before Sessions stepped down.

Trump said Friday that he hadn’t decided whether he wanted to endorse Sessions in the crowded Republican primary to take on Jones.

“Well I haven’t gotten involved. I saw he said very nice things about me last night. But we’ll have to see,” he told reporters. “I haven’t made a determination.”

Shelby and Blunt also praised Sessions before he entered the race, and Shelby has indicated previously that he would endorse Sessions.