Some people sleep on just how reprehensible Jeff Sessions' record in public life is because he mostly resisted the relentless assaults on the rule of law from Donald Trump, American president. That does deserve praise. Time after time, our fearless leader attacked the then-attorney general in public on the basis that, by recusing himself from the Justice Department's Russia probe, he was failing to protect the president. Never mind that the attorney general is the nation's top law-enforcement officer, not the president's lawyer. And never mind that Sessions recused himself on two bases: one, that he served on Trump's campaign so had a conflict of interest; and two, that he'd appeared to lie under oath in his confirmation hearings—Sessions denied this—about whether he'd had contacts with Russians during the campaign.

Trump constantly attacked Sessions, usually via tweet, as almost the sole reason he had all these Russia Problems. "The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself," he tweeted in June 2018. "I would have quickly picked someone else." That was nearly a year after an interview with the New York Times in which Trump began the onslaught: "Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else." Wow, what a direct statement of intent to corrupt the Justice Department for your personal aims. On the flip side, Trump continually demanded investigations into whether Obama did a "wiretapp" on him, The Server, and various other "scandals" that crawled out of the right-wing fever swamp.

Sessions mostly resisted this crap, however, even as Trump called his position "VERY weak" and "DISGRACEFUL" in public. In private, according to Bob Woodward, Trump called him "mentally retarded" and a "dumb Southerner." Eventually, he was dismissed, and former Big Dick Toilet Salesman Matthew Whitaker was appointed acting attorney general. All of this, you would think, would encourage anyone to reevaluate their life choices. Should I continue to support this insane crook who attacked me relentlessly? Should I seize this opportunity to have a significant part of my legacy focus on my integrity defending an independent system of justice, rather than the fact I was denied a federal judge appointment in 1986 in large part because of my record on race, including an episode where I prosecuted black voting-rights activists?

No, Jeff Sessions said to himself. I want the abuse—and the power.

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Apparently, the president warned Sessions against running because he still hates him for not corrupting the Justice Department on his behalf. Hence the hostage video above, where Sessions announces his run for U.S. Senate not by articulating his values or a policy platform, but by slavishly praising Dear Leader. This is what half our politics have been reduced to now: Aging Caucasians expressing breathless devotion to a spray-tanned raccoon whom they all fear like the Babadook. There is no Republican platform on healthcare, inequality, foreign policy, or—don't laugh—the climate crisis. There is only whatever the president said five minutes ago. Subject to change.



And anyway, Sessions doesn't deserve a net-positive legacy, assuming that was ever on the table. This was a guy who said the NAACP and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference were "un-American organizations teaching anti-American values." American values, then, include white supremacy. He also once said, "I thought those guys [the Ku Klux Klan] were OK until I learned they smoked pot." Sessions claimed this was a joke, though it presaged his genuinely insane assaults on legal weed as attorney general. Apparently, "states' rights" applies only to certain things.

Sessions and Trump, seen here in happier times. Win McNamee Getty Images

As a senator, he opposed strengthening hate-crime legislation and helped sabotage the bipartisan immigration-reform bill in 2013. Three black members of Congress—John Lewis, Cedric Richmond, and Cory Booker—took the exceedingly rare step of testifying against a congressional colleague's candidacy for a Cabinet post during his AG confirmation hearings. In that position, he tried to help rig the 2020 Census with a citizenship question, and his DoJ claimed as a defense that it was trying to stop voter suppression in communities of color. Then it urged the Supreme Court to back voter purges. His Justice Department scaled back efforts to counter white-nationalist terrorism at a time when it is spiking. He ordered prosecutors to pursue the harshest possible penalties in narcotics cases, including the death penalty for some non-violent offenses. He sought to expand federal use of private prisons. He took a machete to the Department's police-reform initiatives, much of which centered on misuse of force and racial discrimination.

Now he's back, eager to accept more abuse from The Leader if it means a few more years where he feels the power rushing through his veins. 72-years-old and he can't get enough. One of his opponents is Roy Moore. Come on, Alabama.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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