Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Wednesday defended Attorney General Jeff Sessions from President Donald Trump’s public attacks and offered up a plan to help the attorney general retake his old Senate seat, should he want it.
Brooks, who’s a candidate in the special election to fill Sessions’ old seat, said that he would be willing to withdraw from the race if the other Republican candidates also agree to do so.
“If all Republican candidates collectively agree to simultaneously withdraw from this race, then we clear the way for the Republican Party of Alabama to nominate Jeff Sessions to be the Republican nominee for the December 12, 2017 general election,” Brooks said in a statement issued by his Senate campaign. “He can return to the Senate where he has served us so well. President can then appoint whomever he wants as Attorney General.”
In the statement, Brooks defended Sessions as a “patriot” and one of the “greatest public servants I have ever personally met.” He called on Trump to end his “public waterboarding” of the attorney general.
“I cannot remain silent about the treatment Jeff Sessions is receiving from President Trump,” Brooks said in the statement. “If the President has reservations about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that is okay. No two people agree all the time. But President Trump should raise his reservations with Attorney General Sessions privately, man to man, one on one, not publicly scorn a great man like this.”
“I support President Trump’s policies, but this public waterboarding of one of the greatest people Alabama has ever produced is inappropriate and insulting to the people of Alabama who know Jeff Sessions so well and elected him so often by overwhelming margins,” he added.