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Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for next United States Attorney General, has continuously touted himself as a champion of desegregation.

In a 2009 interview with The National Review, Sessions claimed he filed 20 to 30 civil rights cases to desegregate schools, political organizations, and county commissions while serving as Alabama’s U.S. Attorney.

The Atlantic conducted an extensive search of Alabama’s legal database from 1981 through 1995 and found no evidence that Sen. Sessions ever filed school desegregation lawsuits. They also reviewed his 1986 confirmation hearing transcript when he was nominated to become a U.S. District Court Judge and found nothing to substantiate his claims of being a proponent of desegregation.

Adam Serwer, senior editor of The Atlantic, spoke with Roland Martin during Thursday’s edition of NewsOne Now about Sen. Sessions’ alleged efforts to desegregate schools and said, “It would be unusual for a U.S. Attorney to be doing desegregation cases, those cases are generally handled in the civil rights division in Washington, D.C.”

Serwer explained Sessions’ name appears on the desegregation filings for Alabama on a “pro forma” basis.

Serwer added, “The attorneys who actually worked on the cases that Sessions put forth––and there were very few and most of them weren’t school desegregation cases––said that he didn’t work on those cases, that work was done by other people.”

Watch Roland Martin, Adam Serwer, and the NewsOne Now panel discuss Sen. Jeff Sessions’ civil rights record in the video clip above.

Watch NewsOne Now with Roland Martin, in its new time slot on TV One.

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