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WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Donald Trump selected Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to become the next attorney general of the United States, members of the president-elect's transition team said Friday. Trump's transition team also considered Sessions, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, for the post of secretary of defense, The New York Times reported. Sessions was elected to the Senate in 1996, previously working as a prosecutor.
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On Thursday while visiting Trump Tower, Sessions said he would be "honored to be considered." Trump's team on Thursday said the president-elect was "unbelievably impressed" with Sessions due to his work as a U.S. attorney and Alabama attorney general.
Sessions, known for his staunch conservative stances, has been one of Trump's closest allies since he announced his candidacy last year, Bloomberg reported.
Sessions voted for a constitutional amendment seeking to ban gay marriage in 2006, voted in 2010 against repealing the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military, opposed immigration reform and opposed bipartisan proposals seeking to cut mandatory minimum prison sentences. He would later form a deal with Democrats reducing the minimum sentence disparity between crack and cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1.
But appointing Sessions could generate controversy. In 1986, Sessions was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee from serving as a federal judge due after he was accused of racially charged comments and actions.
During confirmation hearing testimony before the committee, former colleagues said Sessions referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other organizations as "communist inspired" and "un-American organizations with anti-traditional American values."
"Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past," late Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy said during the hearing. "It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge."
Thomas H. Figures, an African American who previously served as a federal prosecutor alongside Sessions, said Sessions called him "boy" -- a term considered a racial slur within context -- and said Sessions said the Ku Klux Klan was fine "until I found out they smoked pot." Sessions would later dismiss the Ku Klux Klan comment as a joke, adding that the organization was a "force for hatred and bigotry."
