
Sen. Tom Cotton blasted his Democratic colleague Cory Booker for choosing to testify against Sen. Jeff Sessions in his confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general this week, calling it a “platform for his presidential aspirations.”
“I’m very disappointed that Senator Booker has chosen to start his 2020 presidential campaign by testifying against Senator Sessions,” Cotton wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday afternoon as the Judiciary Committee hearing took place.
The Arkansas Republican said Booker’s decision to testify, which is widely considered to be the first time in Senate history that one sitting senator would testify against a colleague, is a “disgraceful breach of custom.”
He said it “is especially surprising since Senator Booker just last year said he was ‘honored to have partnered with Senator Sessions’ on a resolution honoring civil-rights marchers.”
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“Senator Booker says he feels compelled to speak out because Senator Session[s] wants to keep criminals behind bars, drugs off our streets, and amnesty from becoming law,” Cotton said. “He’s welcome to oppose these common-sense policies and vote against Senator Sessions’s nomination, but what is so unique about those views to require his extraordinary testimony? Nothing. This hearing simply offers a platform for his presidential aspirations. Senator Booker is better than that, and he knows better.” Booker announced that we would testify against Sessions because of some “deeply troubling” aspects of Sessions’ record, including what Booker said were efforts earlier in his career to “deny citizens voting rights to his criticism of the Voting Rights Act.” Sessions was nominated to be a federal judge in 1986, but was denied the post following accusations of racism.