Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the 84th Attorney General of the U.S. who has been serving the government in one for or another since 1981. In more than 40 years of service, how much is Sessions actually worth?
Jeff Sessions’s Net Worth as of 2017: $7.5 Million
How did Sessions get here? Let’s take a look.
1981 – 1997
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In 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions to be the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The Senate confirmed him and he held that position for 12 years until Bill Clinton’s Attorney General, Janet Reno, requested his resignation.
Sessions’s office filed civil rights charges in the 1981 killing of Michael Donald, a young African-American man who was murdered in Mobile, Alabama by a pair of Ku Klux Klan members. Sessions’s office did not prosecute the case, but both men were arrested and convicted.
In 1985, Sessions prosecuted three African American community organizers in the Black Belt of Alabama, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s former aide Albert Turner, for voter fraud, alleging tampering with 14 absentee ballots. The prosecution stirred charges of selective prosecution of black voter registration. The defendants, known as the Marion Three, were acquitted of all charges by a jury after three hours of deliberation. Historian Wayne Flynt told The Washington Post he regarded concerns about tactics employed in the 1984 election and by Turner in particular as legitimate, but also noted Sessions had no history of advocating for black voter rights before 1984. Interviewed in 2009, Sessions said he remained convinced that he did the right thing, but admitted he “failed to make the case.”
During the process of his confirmation hearing, accusations from the 1980s of Sessions’ racism boiled back to the surface. Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was silenced after she tried to read a 1986 letter from the late Coretta Scott King urging Congress to reject Sessions a federal judgeship position. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters,” King wrote.
1997 – 2017
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In 1996, Sessions won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and then won the elected seat in the November election. The year of his election, Alabama was sued by the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Alliance after state legislature, defended by Sessions during his time as Attorney General of Alabama, attempted to deny funding to student organization that advocated on bhealf of homosexuality at public universities. The law was ultimately ruled unconstitutional.
In 2002, Sessions was reelected against Democratic State Auditor Susan Parker. According to Ballotpedia.org, Sessions’ average net worth was estimated to be $2.490 million in 2004. In 2008, Sessions defeated Democratic State Senator Vivian Davis Figures to win a third term. Two years later, the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance data, estimated that he was worth $7.5 million.
The majority of Sessions’ wealth has come from investments in the stock market, specifically real estate investment, according to The Washington Post. Roughly $5.3 million of his assets were found in real state as of 2010. He also held $1 million in mutual funds.
He also owned roughly 1,100 acres of land that he received as an inheritance from his mother and aunt in 2009. He owned about $2 million worth of land. Not only that, but Sessions reportedly earns anywhere from $115,000 to over $1 million per year from the sale of timber on his land.
Present
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On February 9, 2017, Sessions assumed office as the 84th United States Attorney General. One June 14, he will testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee over his contact with Russian officials during the presidential election.
