Rep. Steve King Rushes to Jeff Sessions’s Defense

Immigration hardliner Rep. Steve King (R-IA) penned an op-ed strongly in support of Jeff Sessions staying on as attorney general Friday, a day after his fellow conservative Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) called on Sessions to resign.

“Jeff Sessions is the right man, in the right place, at the right time, to restore respect for the Rule of Law after eight years of Obama’s destruction. He is already doing it. I look forward to him continuing to do so,” King concludes, after addressing Jordan and Meadows’s concerns.

The opinion piece, published exclusively in the Washington Examiner, cites Sessions’s record at the Department of Justice in arguing against changing horses in mid-stream. King writes:

Sessions gets it. He understands the necessity of preserving the Rule of Law and of rectifying Obama-era abuses. Look at just some of the things the Justice Department has already done to erase Obama’s corrosive legacy and to restore the Rule of Law:

• The DoJ won a 7-2 victory at the Supreme Court in support of President Trump’s existing legal authority to implement a Travel Ban designed to safeguard the homeland.
• The DoJ led efforts to rescind the unconstitutional DACA program that sought to provide legal status and work permits to illegal aliens.
• The DoJ argued in favor of religious liberty at the Supreme Court, siding with a Christian baker’s First Amendment right to not participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies which violate his religious beliefs.
• The DoJ settled lawsuits with 96 plaintiffs who claimed the Obamacare Contraceptive Mandate unlawfully burdened their religious rights. The settlement permanently exempts these plaintiffs from the Obamacare mandate.
• The DoJ has worked to protect the free speech right of students on university campuses.
• The DoJ is working to end the payment of taxpayer-funded grants to Sanctuary Cities that defy the nation’s immigration laws.
• The DoJ is seeking to deliver justice to the family of Kate Steinle by prosecuting her illegal alien killer for the federal crimes of being a felon in possession of a firearm and an illegal alien in possession of a firearm.

King turned out the pro-Sessions op-ed quickly after Jordan and Meadows put out a message in the same pages claiming Sessions “has no control” of the FBI and that a new attorney general is needed. Much of these House Freedom Caucus members’ argument is based on Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

King addresses his fellow conservatives directly. “I believe Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the right man in the right place at the right time to restore respect in America for the Rule of Law,” he writes to them, adding:

In measuring Sessions’ performance in office to date, it is important to remember two things: 1) the political climate he faced within the Department of Justice upon accepting President Trump’s offer to serve, and 2) that Sessions is currently constrained by the fact that he is compelled to wait for the inspector general to complete his ongoing internal review.

Read the rest here.