‘There has to be a reform because it’s very unfair right now. It’s very unfair to African-Americans. It’s very unfair to everybody. And it’s also very costly.’
President Donald Trump said today that he will overrule Attorney General Jeff Sessions on criminal justice reform, The Hill reports.
There has to be reform, according to President Trump, and if Sessions was to try and stunt efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system, the POTUS would “overrule” the attorney general, he explicitly said, adding the following.
“There has to be a reform because it’s very unfair right now. It’s very unfair to African-Americans. It’s very unfair to everybody. And it’s also very costly.”
According to CNN, Sessions played an important role in postponing criminal justice reform until after the midterms.
“We’re pleased the President agreed that we shouldn’t support criminal justice reform that would reduce sentences,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
But, for President Trump, so it seems, criminal justice reform is a must and neither Sessions nor the Justice Department will stymie his efforts.
Trump’s comments come hours before he’s scheduled to have lunch with rapper Kanye West and NFL star Jim Brown, The Hill notes.
The president credited West and Brown for what he claims to be a “big following” in the African-American community.
Trump heaped praise on West in particular, calling him a “friend.”
“First of all, I like him a lot. He’s a friend of mine. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a different kind of guy. He’s a very different kind of a guy, I say that in a positive way,” the POTUS said.
As for Sessions, the attorney general seems to have undergone a remarkable transformation of sorts; from early Trump supporter and loyal ally to an adversary.
As detailed by a previous Inquisitr report, the relationship between President Trump and his attorney general appears to be deteriorating rapidly.
Most recently, Trump blamed Sessions for the Rosenstein controversy – Rosenstein reportedly suggested removing President Trump from office by invoking the 25th Amendment and floated the idea of secretly recording him – and weeks before that, the POTUS viciously attacked Sessions for failing to “take control” of the Department of Justice.
According to the Washington Examiner, the proposed criminal justice reform Jeff Sessions opposes would authorize $250 million over five years for work-training programs for inmates, ban the shackling of pregnant prisoners, require prisoners to be within 500 miles of families, reduce the age for elderly inmate compassionate release, among other things.
Jeff Sessions is known to be a staunch criminal justice hardliner, and The Guardian has suggested that the attorney general is pushing for a new War on Drugs, marijuana included.
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