Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (born December 24, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who is the 84th Attorney General of the United States. Sessions served as the junior United States Senator from Alabama from 1997 until 2017, and is a member of the Republican Party. From 1981 to 1993, he served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. Sessions was nominated in 1986 to be a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, but his contentious nomination failed. Sessions was elected Attorney General of Alabama in 1994, and to the U.S. Senate in 1996, being re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2014. During his time in Congress, Sessions was considered one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate.
An early supporter of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Sessions was considered as a possible Vice Presidential nominee, but Indiana governor Mike Pence was ultimately selected for the ticket. In November 2016, then-President-elect Donald Trump nominated Sessions for US Attorney General. He was confirmed on February 8, 2017, with a 52–47 vote in the Senate, and was sworn in on February 9. In his Attorney General confirmation hearings, Sessions said that he did not have contact with Russian officials during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. In March 2017, news reports revealed that Sessions had twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016. Sessions subsequently recused himself from any investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election while some Democratic lawmakers called for his resignation.
