Before the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as attorney general on Wednesday, Senator Al Franken wanted to set the record straight one last time on the nominee’s civil rights background. “I know Senator Sessions and I know his record on voting rights,” Franken said in the hearing. “He’s no champion of voting rights.” Franken criticized Sessions for “trumpeting his personal involvement in three voting rights cases and one school desegregation case,” when in fact the Alabama senator was barely involved in those cases. “I guess it just seemed to me,” Franken said, “that perhaps Senator Sessions or the transition team was attempting to revise some of that history and to recast him as a civil rights champion. And as it turns out, that’s exactly what was going on.”

The Minnesota senator didn’t stop there. He accused Ted Cruz, a committee colleague who was absent at the time, of misrepresenting earlier remarks by Franken. When Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn objected, Franken replied, “Senator Cruz did the very thing that Senator Cornyn is accusing me of doing.... He personally went after me. He personally impugned my integrity. You didn’t object then, did you?” Franken even snuck in a dig at President Donald Trump. “Let’s pause for a fact-check,” he said. “President Trump lost the popular vote to the tune of 2.86 million votes. That’s a fact. It’s not an alternative fact—it’s a fact.”

CLIP: Exchange between @SenFranken and @JohnCornyn during Franken's statement on Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions. pic.twitter.com/yk5rhWeZUf — CSPAN (@cspan) February 1, 2017

The press ate it up. The Hill: “Franken slams Cruz.” Slate: “Franken Eviscerates Ted Cruz.” Business Insider: “Franken unloads on Ted Cruz and Trump’s voter-fraud claims.” Alternet: “Franken Thoroughly Dismantles Jeff Sessions’ Dubious Civil Rights Record.” Salon: “Watch Al Franken excoriate Jeff Sessions.” Mother Jones: “Franken Tears Into Sessions Over Civil Rights Claims.”



Wednesday wasn’t the first time Franken made headlines in the confirmation hearings for Trump’s cabinet picks. With tough questions, prosecutorial fact-checking, and even a rare bit of humor, the former comedian turned in a series of impressive performances, leading both a CBS News analyst and The Hill to call him “the breakout star” of the hearings. “Franken emerges as liberal force in hearings,” the latter declared. Politico reported that Franken and Senator Elizabeth Warren “make Trump’s Cabinet picks squirm.”

This is an unusual amount of attention for Franken, who has largely shunned the spotlight in his time on Capitol Hill. A Saturday Night Live cast member who later became one of the country’s foremost progressive political satirists, he turned serious when he launched his Senate bid a decade ago. After Franken ousted Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by just 312 votes in 2008, he put his head down and learned the ropes of the Senate. He largely avoided national media, granting interviews mainly to Minnesota outlets. In 2014, a couple of months before Franken won reelection by more than 10 points, The Los Angeles Times ran a profile, “Al Franken takes Senate job seriously (he’s still funny in private).” “It must be said at this point: Sen. Al Franken is just dull,” wrote Michael Memoli, noting that Franken “generally shuns the national media unless it’s to talk about one of his obscure pet issues, such as corporate media mergers or net neutrality.”