"Tonight Senator Mitch McConnell silenced Mrs King's voice on the Sen floor - & millions who are afraid & appalled by what's happening in our country," tweeted Elizabeth Warren after the incident.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren was rebuked by the Senate for quoting Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr's widow on the Senate floor.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat broke the chamber's arcane rule by reading a 30-year-old letter from Coretta opposing Sessions' judicial nomination in 1986, AP reports. Her letter urged the Senate to reject Jeff Sessions' nomination to a federal judgeship, Warren said in a post on Facebook.
The letter was written 10 years before Sessions was elected to the Senate. "I'm reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record. I'm simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judge meant and what it would mean in history for her," AP quotes Warren as saying.
In the letter obtained by the Washington Post, King wrote that when Sessions was a federal prosecutor, he "used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters" and he “lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge."
“I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream,” King concludes.
The chamber is debating the Republican's nomination for Attorney General with Democrats opposed to Sessions and Republicans in support of him.
Warren's act put her in violation for "impugning the motives" of Jeff Sessions and so Senate Republican Mitch McConnell invoked the rules. Warren is now banned from speaking on Sessions' nomination.
On Twitter, Warren said she "will not be silent" while US Republicans are in support of Sessions for Attorney General who "will never stand up" when US President Donald Trump breaks the law.
The vote on Sessions is due on February 8.
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