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This GOP senator thinks Jeff Sessions is totally wrong about crime

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is fighting against an attorney general from his own party.  

Conservative Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah used to have an ally with the Department of Justice in the bipartisan criminal justice reforms he’s been kicking around Congress for the past few years. Now, he’s fighting against an attorney general from his own party.

When Eric Holder lead the DOJ under President Obama, Washington, D.C., had criminal justice reform fever. But times have changed with President Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions. He’s ripped out Holder’s rules that pushed federal prosecutors away from mandatory minimum sentences and has all-but-abandoned previous efforts to take on police departments over civil rights violations.

“[Sessions] doesn’t agree with me that there is grave danger in giving the government too much power, among other things, to prosecute,” Lee said after he spent a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday criticizing Sessions, who he called a “dear friend” and “close colleague.”

“Bad things can happen — bad things like somebody going to prison with a minimum mandatory sentence of 55 years for selling three dime bags of pot over a 72 hour period,” Lee continued. “That happened in my state just a few years ago.”

VICE News sat down with Lee to talk about the state of criminal justice reform after his showdown with Sessions.