https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opNwY8QgBDc
(Video above: Senator Jeff Sessions grills U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch)

WASHINGTON — Senator Jeff Sessions on Thursday had a four-word response to Attorney General Loretta Lynch saying drug trafficking prosecutions are down because the Obama administration is focusing on dealers higher up the food chain: “I don’t believe that.”

“Are you aware of the fact that your own office of The United State Attorney that operates under your directions, at the end of 2015, found that the six month average of drug prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice was down 21 percent compared to five years ago?” Sessions asked Lynch during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “Are you aware that, excluding prosecutions in federal magistrate courts, the six month average was nearly 32 percent lower at the end of 2015 than five years ago?”

“The number does not surprise me because we have moved through a process of focusing less on the low-level individual offenders, toward targeting the trafficking networks that you have noted are really the appropriate focus of ours…” Lynch replied, which did not satisfy Sessions, a former U.S. attorney and Alabama attorney general.

“I’ve heard that argument, that we’re always focusing on ‘higher people.’ That’s why the numbers are down for over 25 years. I do not believe that…” He said. “Prison population is declining at a rapid rate. It was 5,000 down last year. The budget for the prisons is being reduced as a substantial decline in population at the same time that drug use is surging and deaths are occurring and in my opinion it’s going to get worse.”

Data from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts appears to contradict AG Lynch’s suggestion that the reason are down is because the Justice Department is focusing on drug traffickers rather than drug possessors.

Drug trafficking prosecutions today make up only 89 percent of total federal drug prosecutions, as compared to 95 percent five years ago.

Additionally, since Attorney General Eric Holder in 2013 ordered federal prosecutors not to bring charges carrying mandatory minimum penalties against certain drug traffickers, drug possession prosecutions have increased by 71 percent.

This seems to indicate that the Justice Department is charging drug traffickers with the lesser charge of possession, per the Holder directive. In other words, contrary to Attorney General Lynch’s response, the Justice Department is prosecuting fewer drug traffickers overall, and many of those that the Department is prosecuting are being treated as simple drug possessors rather than as the dangerous drug traffickers they are.

A clip of the exchange between Senator Sessions and Attorney General Lynch can be seen in the video above.