Cory Booker

He has no track record of fighting for justice for minorities, despite the characterizations that you have heard from others today.

If you vote to confirm Senator Sessions, you take ownership of everything he may do or not do in office.

With all that is at stake in our Nation now, with the urgent need for healing and for love, I pray that my colleagues will join me in opposing his nomination.

America needs an Attorney General who is resolute and determined to bend the arc.

The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it.

I want an Attorney General who is committed to supporting law enforcement and securing law and order, but that is not enough.

I believe, like perhaps all of my colleagues in the Senate, that in the choice between standing with Senate norms or standing up for what my conscience tells me is best for our country, I will always choose conscience and country.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I welcome your questions.

If we can imagine Senator Sessions leading a Department of Justice in Michael Brown's Ferguson, Freddie Gray's Baltimore, towns with rising hate crime, communities of vulnerable populations, and a democracy divided by voter suppression in…

His failure to condemn the President-elect's call for an unconscionable and unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigrants.

His consistent opposition to any meaningful gun controls shows an unwillingness to stand up to the firearms lobby.

His opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act indicates a hostility to the claims of employment discrimination.

Senator Sessions is unfit to serve as Attorney General.

His duty will be to enforce and protect our civil rights and constitutional freedoms, including a woman's right to choose.

The office I hold is not properly political, but strictly legal; and it is my duty, above all other ministers of state, to uphold the law and to resist all encroachments, from whatever quarter.

The job of the Attorney General is to enforce Federal law, even if he voted against the law.

The process is going to be fair and thorough.

An Attorney General does not investigate or prosecute at the direction of the President.

I have some concerns about the violence between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi and how that might destabilize Rwanda.

But I read the constitution. He could stay till 2035.

I have concerns about the health of civil society in Rwanda and in Gabon.

What do you believe we could be doing in the United States to help them deal with this pressing concern?

Human rights advocates are asserting the laws and taboos prohibiting public acknowledgement of ethnic identity have been wielded as a tool to silence criticism of the government.

Thank you for holding this hearing Mr. Chairman and thank you to our witnesses for being here today and for willing to take on these posts.

When Diane Rwigara, a Kagame critic and would-be first female independent presidential candidate, was denied registration as a candidate, that obviously raises concerns.