Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is poised to announce his intention to run for U.S. Senate in Alabama on Thursday.
His old seat is currently occupied by Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), who won Alabama’s 2018 special election in an upset victory after Republican Roy Moore’s campaign was torpedoed by credible accusations of him sexually assaulting teen girls.
Several other Republicans are gunning for Jones’ seat, including Rep. Bradly Byrne (R-AL), Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R), and Moore again.
A fierce supporter of now-President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Sessions left his Senate seat in 2017 to serve as Trump’s attorney general. During his tenure, Sessions rescinded protections for DACA recipients and pushed other hardline anti-immigration policies.
Trump soured on Sessions after the attorney general recused himself from the investigation into Russian election interference and appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to head the probe.
After suffering several months of Trump publicly raking him over the coals, Sessions finally resigned a day after the 2018 midterms.
Though Sessions might have a decent shot at unseating Jones, one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats, it doesn’t seem likely that Trump, who apparently still hasn’t forgiven Sessions, will give him a leg up in the primaries.
“I would say if I had one do-over, I would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general,” Trump told NBC News host Chuck Todd in June.
