Jeff Sessions appears in three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case as the object of criticism rather than as a participant. The excerpts present him as Attorney General under President Trump, described by Bob Zadek as “Trump’s first Attorney General” and as a “self-described drug warrior.” The episodes treat three distinct areas of his conduct: drug enforcement policy, civil asset forfeiture, and the exercise of the Attorney General’s power to reverse rulings of the Board of Immigration Appeals.
The drug war and the violence argument
The earliest treatment comes in a July 2017 episode with Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron. Zadek opens by describing Sessions as having complained in a recent op-ed piece that being soft on drug sentencing means more violent crime, and as having taken an oath to vigorously enforce drug laws Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). Zadek characterizes Sessions as saying that because there is a law on the books, he will enforce it without examining its purpose or whether it makes sense.
Miron’s response inverts the premise. He states that it is very rare that consumption of drugs induces anyone to engage in violent acts, and that the correct connection is that drug prohibition induces violence. His mechanism is economic: banning a good does not eliminate supply and demand but drives the market underground, where participants cannot resolve contractual disagreements through courts and lawyers, so the substitute is violence. He gives the example of a drug-trade employer who wants sellers to believe that stealing the merchandise will bring retaliation, and cites fights over drug territories and contract enforcement as disputes resolved violently in underground markets Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Zadek frames the same point in his own words, saying that because drug commerce is forced underground it does not get the benefits of a civilized system for resolving disputes, and that the link between drug use and violence does not exist. He also places the assumption of drug-induced violence in a cultural lineage, referring to the film Reefer Madness and to American mythology Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Civil asset forfeiture
Sessions returns in a December 2019 episode with Brian D. Kelly, whose research concerns civil asset forfeiture. Zadek reads aloud a one-sentence quotation from Sessions, whom he calls one of the worst Attorneys General the country has had: “Civil asset forfeiture is a key tool that helps law enforcement defund organized crime, take back ill-gotten gains, and prevent new crimes from being committed. And it weakens the criminals and the cartels.” Zadek tells listeners that Kelly’s research shows how wrong almost every word of that sentence is Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019).
Kelly’s own contribution to the episode is an economic argument about supply and demand. He says forfeiture may affect the sale and supply of drugs but not the use of drugs, and that reducing supply while demand stays constant raises cost, meaning a person committing drug crime to support a habit must commit more crime to support the same habit. He also distinguishes his position on drug use itself, stating that people are allowed to ingest whatever they wish so long as they do not harm somebody else Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019).
Later in the same episode, Kelly addresses reform prospects. He notes a 2015 reform under the Obama administration that was quite helpful in equitable sharing, and says it was largely reversed under Sessions. He adds that forfeiture reform at the federal level faces hearings and bills but that he does not see them passing into law for at least the next year or two, and that if one wants reform in forfeiture one has to look to the states Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019).
The certification power and immigration adjudication
The third appearance comes in an August 2021 episode with Ilya Somin on asylum. The discussion concerns a Board of Immigration Appeals decision holding that a slave laborer for a terrorist organization had provided material support for terrorism and was therefore ineligible for asylum. Somin explains that the BIA is part of the Justice Department, an executive branch agency making judicial-like decisions, and that its decisions bind lower-level executive branch officials including asylum case officers Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Somin then describes the mechanism by which such a decision can be undone. Under the statute establishing the BIA’s powers, the Attorney General can reverse its decisions at a mere stroke of his pen, using what is called his certification power: he can put out a memo certifying and reversing a decision and stating what the correct rule should be, and that ruling binds the BIA and lower-level officials. Somin states that this power was used in the Trump administration a number of times by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse BIA rulings that were favorable to immigrants and asylum seekers, and that Attorney General Merrick Garland has used it in some other cases himself Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Zadek’s contribution to this segment is a proposed fix. He suggests that adding the word “voluntary” to the exclusion for providing material support for terrorism would make the line of cases dealing with the slave labor exception disappear, and argues that without such a word, paying taxes to an autocratic terrorist government could theoretically count as providing material support Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Across episodes
The three episodes do not develop a single argument about Sessions so much as apply a consistent libertarian critique to three different exercises of his authority. The 2017 episode contests the factual premise of his drug enforcement position through Miron’s economics of prohibition; the 2019 episode contests his public defense of civil asset forfeiture through Kelly’s research and notes his reversal of the 2015 equitable-sharing reform; the 2021 episode treats his use of the certification power as an instance of executive branch absorption of judicial functions, with Somin noting that Garland has used the same power. What changes across the excerpts is the subject matter, not the assessment: in each case Sessions is cited as an example of unilateral executive discretion producing outcomes the host and guests oppose. The 2019 and 2021 episodes both involve the Attorney General’s ability to set policy without legislation, though the excerpts do not connect the two discussions explicitly.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe Sessions’s earlier career, his tenure as a senator, or the circumstances of his departure from the Justice Department. They do not state the content of the 2015 equitable-sharing reform beyond Kelly’s description of it as helpful, nor the specific BIA decisions Sessions reversed. No excerpt presents a defense of Sessions’s positions in his own words beyond the single forfeiture quotation and Zadek’s paraphrase of the op-ed, and no guest appears on the show to argue his case.