Sen. Jeff Sessions, president-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the next attorney general, forcefully rebutted allegations that he had once harbored sympathies for racist groups and had condemned civil rights advocates.
"These are damnably false charges," Sessions said, straying from his prepared statement at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
Sessions has been sharply criticized by civil rights advocates for prosecuting three black leaders in 1985 on voter fraud charges. He has also been accused of making racially insensitive remarks, including one in which he said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK, until he learned its members smoked marijuana. Sessions and some others have said he was cracking a joke.
Such allegations helped torpedo his nomination to be a federal judge in 1986.
"I abhor the Klan and what it represents and its hateful ideology," Sessions said.
He also said he fully supported the efforts in the 1980s of lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division to desegregate schools and ensure more fair elections for minorities.
