Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed Tuesday that the prime minister will not be attending the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, despite reports to the contrary. The Prime Minister's Office clarified that Netanyahu had not been invited to the ceremony and that it is not customary for foreign leaders to attend presidential inaugurations. The Prime Minister's Office statement followed a series of mistaken reports on the matter, including assertions that Netanyahu had canceled a planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in order to attend the inauguration. Netanyahu had been scheduled to speak at the forum and to hold meetings throughout. He canceled the trip but did not officially announce the reason for doing so. The Prime Minister's Office stressed that Netanyahu's cancellation is also unrelated to an ongoing police investigation into his conduct. An unofficial source stated that the prime minister's canceled appearance at the forum is due to conclusions drawn from a recent situational assessment. Among other things, Netanyahu reportedly felt it necessary to remain in Israel due to the Paris peace conference and U.N. Security Council discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meanwhile, with less than two weeks before the Jan. 20 inauguration, Senate confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet picks are underway. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, nominated as attorney general, was the first to face a confirmation hearing on Tuesday. He appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sessions is one of Trump's most controversial cabinet appointments. As attorney general, Sessions would serve as the top U.S. law enforcement officer and be responsible for giving unbiased legal advice to the president and executive agencies. He has been accused of racism, and in 1986, was denied confirmation to a federal judgeship after allegations emerged that he made racist remarks, including testimony that he called an African-American prosecutor "boy," an allegation that Sessions denied. Before the Judiciary Committee, Sessions several times defended himself against charges of racism. He said allegations that he harbored sympathies toward the Ku Klux Klan, a violent white supremacist organization, were false. "I abhor the Klan and what it represents and its hateful ideology," Sessions said in his opening remarks. Sessions further said the comments he made during the 2016 presidential campaign about Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices and charitable foundation would cloud the perception of impartiality if the Justice Department continued investigating Clinton. He said he would recuse himself and favored a special prosecutor to carry out any future investigations. He also said he would enforce a 2015 law that outlawed waterboarding terrorism suspects even if it meant resisting Trump. The senator said he had voted against the law, believing those in high positions in the military and intelligence community should be able to do so. During the campaign, Trump said waterboarding, which simulates drowning and is widely regarded as torture, was an effective technique and vowed to bring it back and make it "a hell of a lot worse." More recently, Trump has said retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, his nominee for defense secretary, had persuasively argued against it. Sessions said he would not support banning anyone from the United States on the basis of religion and that Trump's intentions were to restrict people from countries harboring terrorists, not all Muslims. Trump at one point campaigned on a proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. Still, protesters accusing Sessions of having a poor record on human rights interrupted the Capitol Hill proceedings several times. Some protestors wore Ku Klux Klan robes. In an unprecedented move, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is set to testify against Sessions Wednesday. It will be the first time that a sitting senator will have testified against another sitting senator during a cabinet post confirmation. On Wednesday morning, Trump is set to hold his first press conference since his election win. He is likely to be asked about his cabinet appointments, his commentary on Twitter and his doubts over the intelligence report suggesting Russian interference in the presidential election.
