Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick wrote a three-page letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging members to reject the appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general, calling him the "wrong person to place in charge of our justice system," the Boston Globe reported.
Patrick and Sessions have history dating back to 1985, when Patrick, working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, successfully defended three black civil rights leaders against charges of voter fraud brought by Sessions, then a federal prosecutor, the Globe reported.
Victory in that case did nothing to quell Patrick's distrust of Sessions, apparently.
"To use prosecutorial discretion to attempt to criminalize voter assistance is wrong and should be disqualifying for any aspirant to the nation's highest law enforcement post," Patrick wrote Tuesday to the committee, the Globe reported.
In fact, Patrick, the former two-term governor who succeeded Mitt Romney, testified against Sessions in 1986 for a federal judgeship, for which Sessions ultimately was rejected, the Globe reported.
"At a time when our nation is so divided, when so many feel so deeply that their lived experience is unjust, Mr. Sessions is the wrong person to place in charge of our justice system," wrote Patrick, who now works for Bain Capital.
Patrick's letter to the Senate came the same day that chapter members of the Alabama NAACP staged a sit-in outside Sessions' local office in Mobile, Ala.
Sessions' spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores dismissed the criticism and the accusations of racism regarding the 1985 case.
"These false portrayals of Senator Sessions will fail as tired, recycled, hyperbolic charges that have been thoroughly rebuked and discredited," Flores told the Globe.
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