Trump chooses Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Rep. Mike Pompeo for CIA director

President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he plans to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) as CIA director, the first selections to his Cabinet as his transition continues to build momentum.

Trump also confirmed that he has selected retired general Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, news that had been reported a day earlier.

In a statement, Trump called Sessions one of his most trusted campaign advisers and cited his “world-class legal mind.”

Sessions, 69, was Trump’s first endorser in the Senate and quickly became the then-candidate’s chief resource on policy, but his hard-line views on immigration are expected to make his nomination controversial among human rights groups and Democrats.

The fourth-term senator has been dogged by accusations of racism throughout his career.

In 1986, he was denied a federal judgeship after former colleagues testified before a Senate committee that he joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.”

Sessions served as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and as Alabama’s attorney general. In a statement, he said there was “no greater honor” than to lead the Justice Department.

Read the whole article from the Washington Post.

Featured image courtesy of NBC News.