Jeff Sessions faces a tough job as the new attorney general — and Trump isn’t making it any easier

Reporting from Washington â€”  After enduring an unusually bitter confirmation battle for a sitting U.S. senator, Jeff Sessions will barely have time to settle into his fifth-floor office at the Justice Department before he takes center stage in some of the nation’s most acute controversies.

Sessions was approved 52 to 47 on Wednesday night after a prolonged fight, in a vote largely down party lines. Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia was the only Democrat who supported him. Sessions voted present.

With too few votes to block the nomination, Senate Democrats slow-walked the confirmation, staging a dramatic overnight session Tuesday after Republicans silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), preventing her from reading decades-old criticism of Sessions from Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Even House Democrats, who have no vote on the confirmation, joined in protest Wednesday evening in the Senate chamber.

At the Justice Department, Sessions will be responsible for leading the legal defense of President Trump’s immigration restrictions, for halting and investigating terrorist attacks, and for investigating hate crimes and abuses by local and state law enforcement.

He also is expected to play a key role in implementing Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigration by increasing deportations.

His boss isn’t making things easier. Last weekend, Trump denounced a federal judge in Seattle who had temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order suspending immigration and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard arguments Tuesday on the government’s effort to lift the stay. The judges did not issue an immediate ruling, and Trump complained Wednesday that the legal process was taking too long.

“You could be a lawyer, or you don’t have to be a lawyer. If you were a good student in high school or a bad student in high school, you can understand this, and it’s really incredible to me that we have a court case that’s going on so long,� Trump told a law enforcement chiefs’ conference in Washington.

The legal battle over the travel ban is expected to wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sessions “is in a tight spot, that is for sure,� said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “He has a tough job for a whole panoply of reasons.�

Sessions was first elected to the Senate from Alabama in 1996, and served two decades on the Judiciary Committee, which reviews federal judges and conducts oversight of the Justice Department.

But in a staunchly partisan era, his confirmation hearings quickly broke on party lines. In the end, he did not receive a single vote from Democrats on the committee.

Supporters say Sessions is uniquely qualified to lead the Justice Department in such a turbulent time.

Pointing to his 12 years as U.S. attorney in Alabama, and two years as state attorney general, they said Sessions has the experience to prosecute criminals, make policy decisions and aggressively tackle illegal immigration.

They described him as personable and courteous, traits that led him to be generally well regarded in the Senate, and could help him win over career Justice Department lawyers.

“He is serious about both the law and the department, and with his background he is uniquely equipped to handle the job,� said Michael B. Mukasey, who served as attorney general under President George W. Bush and who testified in support of Sessions’ nomination. “I suspect the learning curve won’t be too steep for him.�

Democrats and civil rights groups worry that Sessions’ conservative record on civil rights, voting rights and environmental laws portends trouble.

They also are concerned that such an ardent Trump advocate — Sessions was one of Trump’s earliest and most enthusiastic campaign surrogates — will oversee the reported federal investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

U.S. intelligence agencies last month issued a report that concluded Russian intelligence agencies launched cyberattacks against Democratic Party officials and took other measures aimed at influencing American voters to support Trump.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other Democrats have questioned whether Sessions can be trusted to enforce the law, especially if potential investigative targets are in the White House.

“It is very difficult to reconcile for me the independence and objectivity necessary for the position of attorney general with the partisanship this nominee has demonstrated,� Feinstein said to explain why she voted against Sessions’ nomination in the Judiciary Committee.

Sessions has said he won’t be afraid to tell Trump he is wrong or that a planned action is unconstitutional. An attorney general has “to be able to say no, both for the country, for the legal system and for the president, to avoid situations that are not acceptable. I understand that duty,� Sessions testified.

Legal experts and former Justice Department officials said Sessions would have a difficult task. Trump is used to getting his way. He also has expressed expansive views of presidential authority that worry even the most conservative legal scholars.

John Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley who served in the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration, said Sessions would have to combat those presidential impulses while retaining Trump’s trust — a task that Yoo likened to walking a tightrope.

“If you are too far from the president, you will get cut out of the decision-making process and you are not doing your job as attorney general,� said Yoo, who recently wrote in the New York Times that he had concerns about Trump’s use of presidential authority.

While in the Justice Department, Yoo was a vocal advocate for a muscular executive branch. He wrote the so-called torture memos that gave the Bush administration the legal authority to approve the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation� of suspected terrorists, including waterboarding.

“On the other hand,� Yoo added, “someone has to tell the president that what he is doing is illegal or unconstitutional, even when Trump’s instincts and his political advisors are pushing for it. Sessions is the only person in the administration now who can do that, tell the president no. We will have to see how that plays out.�

In contrast, Yoo said James B. Comey, the FBI director, has little political capital.

In July, Comey publicly announced that no charges would be filed against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her email practices as secretary of State, infuriating Republicans. Then, about a week before the November election, he announced the FBI was reviewing newly discovered emails, astonishing Democrats.

The last-minute disclosure threw the presidential race into chaos, and even though Comey said several days later that the review had ended with no change in the bureau’s conclusion in the Clinton case, Democrats blamed Comey for tipping the election in Trump’s favor.

Sessions had no role in that controversy, but he may have to deal with its aftermath. Comey’s actions — and others taken by the Justice Department in the email inquiry — are under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The outcome of that inquiry “could be very messy,� Yoo said. “Suppose it determines that Comey acted improperly and made bad decisions. The natural question then is, should he be replaced? Whatever the decision, it is going to be unpopular.�

Sessions can expect a frosty reception from some staffers at the Justice Department, particularly those in the civil rights and environmental units, which expect their broad authority under the Obama administration to be curtailed. Lawyers in other divisions said they didn’t expect much to change.

Despite the uneasiness, lawyers at the Justice Department said they were pleased with early White House choices for key department posts.

In particular, they cited the selection of Rod Rosenstein, a longtime Justice Department lawyer who has served as U.S. attorney in Maryland in both Republican and Democratic administrations, to be deputy attorney general.

“Rod is a great pick,� said David O’Neil, a former top Justice Department official in the Obama administration, echoing comments of current lawyers. “He is as institutional as they come. He has a lot of integrity.�

The deputy attorney general runs day-to-day operations in the sprawling department, which includes the FBI, Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It has more than 100,000 employees and a $28.7-billion budget.

Follow @delwilber on Twitter

[email protected]

ALSO:

Federal agents are reinvestigating Syrian refugees in U.S. who may have slipped through vetting lapse

The long and complicated road to understanding Jeff Sessions and matters of race

How these Brooklyn prosecutors work to get innocent convicts out of prison

UPDATES:

4:27 p.m. — This article was updated with Sessions’ confirmation.

7:21 a.m. — This article was updated with comments from President Trump made Wednesday morning.

This article was originally published at 3 a.m.