Media caption Donald Trump said his meeting with Mitt Romney 'went great' 
 
 US President-elect Donald Trump has met one of his fiercest critics, Mitt Romney, with reports suggesting he may be considered for secretary of state. 
 
 Neither man gave details of their 80-minute meeting on Saturday. Mr Romney said the talks had been "far-reaching". 
 
 During the campaign, Mr Romney called Mr Trump a "fraud", while Mr Trump said Mr Romney's unsuccessful presidential bid in 2012 had been "the worst ever". 
 
 Mr Trump has settled several posts so far, a number of them controversial. 
 
 The nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was rejected from becoming a federal judge in 1986 because of alleged racist remarks. 
 
 Lt Gen Michael Flynn, the new national security adviser, has drawn concern over his strident views on Islam. 
 
 Media caption Donald Trump and Mitt Romney's war of words 
 
 On leaving Mr Trump's golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, Mr Romney did not answer questions on whether he would accept a cabinet position, or whether he still thought his host was "a con artist". 
 
 He said only that they had held a "far-reaching conversation with regards to the various theatres of the world" in which the US had an interest. 
 
 Mr Trump will conduct more meetings with potential appointees at the golf course over the weekend. 
 
 Media caption Romney: ''His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University'' 
 
 In March, Mr Romney said Mr Trump had neither "the temperament nor the judgement to be president", accusing him of bullying, misogyny and dishonesty. 
 
 "Prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished" if Mr Trump became the nominee, he said. 
 
 Mr Trump responded by mocking Mr Romney, calling him a "failed candidate" and a "choke artist". 
 
 However, US media suggest the role of secretary of state could be up for grabs. In the past, Mr Romney has taken a far more critical line on Russia than that suggested by Mr Trump. 
 
 The other key appointments so far are Mike Pompeo as CIA director and Stephen Bannon as chief strategist. 
 
 Separately on Friday, Mr Trump settled three lawsuits for fraud brought against him over his Trump University. 
 
 Media caption Donald Trump's lead attorney in the cases Daniel Petrocelli said Mr Trump wanted to "put aside this issue - and get it behind him" 
 
 He tweeted on Saturday that he had settled "for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country". 
 
 In settling the class-action lawsuits, Mr Trump "was willing to sacrifice his personal interests, put this behind him, and move forward", his lawyer said. 
 
 Mr Trump had been sued by former students who paid $35,000 (£28,000) for property "secrets" from his "hand-picked" instructors. 
 
 The lawsuits alleged the school had misled students and failed to deliver on its promises. ||||| President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama to be U.S. Attorney General has sent a chill up the spines of many in the emerging cannabis industry. 
 
 Many were preparing themselves for someone like Rudy Giuliani. He wasn't for legalizing marijuana, but they felt he would be pragmatic and recognize the financial benefits that states have been reaping from the tax revenues. Sessions is a passionate anti-marijuana advocate. 
 
 As attorney general, Sessions would oversee federal prosecutors and the Drug Enforcement Administration as well as other law enforcement agencies that could come down hard on marijuana businesses, even if they complied with their own states' laws. 
 
 Sessions has spoken out against marijuana a number of times. 
 
 He once said, "You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process. It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.” 
 
 He famously said of the Ku Klux Klan that he was okay with them, “until I learned they smoked pot.” Sessions later said he was joking. 
 
 "Senator Sessions is clearly out in the deep end when it comes to issues of marijuana policy and he stands diametrically opposed to the majority of Americans who favor the legalization and regulation of marijuana,” said Erik Altieri, executive Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “This could foreshadow some very bad things for the eight states that have legalized marijuana for adult use and in the 29 states with medical marijuana programs.” Altieri said Sessions could begin blocking ballot initiatives, conduct raids on legal businesses and begin dismantling the legal cannabis industry that has already been established in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. 
 
 Many in the industry are holding onto hope that Trump, who has expressed his support for medical marijuana will maintain that position. They are also clinging to the belief that the businessman in Trump will see the amount of money that is coming into the states from the taxes and will not want to take that money away. 
 
 Aaron Herzberg, Partner & General Counsel at CalCann Holdings, said,”Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is the worst pick that Trump could have made for attorney general as it comes to marijuana issues, and this selection bodes very poorly for the Trump administration to adopt a marijuana-friendly policy. It appears that he is intent on rolling back policy to the 1980's Nancy Reagan's 'just say no on drugs' days. He has displayed open hostility to efforts to legalize marijuana, recently stating earlier this year that 'good people don't smoke marijuana.' He has been extremely hostile to efforts to legalize both medical and adult use marijuana.” 
 
 The National Cannabis Industry Association struck a more conciliatory note saying, “We look forward to working with him to ensure that states' rights and voter choices on cannabis are respected." 
 
 The marijuana community also points to several remarks that President-elect Trump has made during the campaign where he said he believed it was up to the states, however, Tom Angell of the Marijuana Majority said, “Sessions’s past remarks clearly indicate he doesn’t support letting states set their own marijuana laws without federal interference, setting up an early potential conflict inside the new administration. Trump will have to decide how much rein to give the attorney general to go against his repeated campaign pledges.” 
 
 The industry has been gathered in Las Vegas this past week for its biggest event, the Marijuana and Business Conference. Over 7,000 people attended the conference and there were over 300 exhibitors. Most were expecting Trump to appoint a conservative attorney general, but they genuinely feel that the genie is already out of the bottle on marijuana and that it would be incredibly difficult to reverse course. The community points to polls that overwhelmingly favor legalization and they point to the huge tax revenues that the legalized states have come to rely on. 
 
 However, this is an administration that has said it wants to reverse Obamacare, reverse Roe v. Wade and reverse trade agreements. A nascent federally illegal industry is small potatoes compared to those items. 
 
 With millions invested into businesses, the nervousness is clear as they begin gearing up for a fight they believe it coming. NORML is already raising money for an Emergency Response Fund. 
 
 Sessions will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing; if the committee advances his nomination, as expected, it will go to a floor vote. He is likely to be approved because Democrats do not have the votes to block his confirmation. It is expected that he will be questioned about racist comments that derailed his nomination to serve as a federal judge in 1986, and about his views on drug policy. ||||| Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general is being met with alarm at the Justice Department’s civil rights division and could trigger an exodus there, former officials said Friday. 
 
 Longtime lawyers in the unit that enforces voting rights laws, conducts investigations into alleged police abuses and prosecutes hate crimes were already on edge about what Trump’s victory would mean for their mission, but the selection of Sessions pushed those fears to another level, former officials said. 
 
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 "If there was a level above DEFCON One, it would be that," said Sam Bagenstos, who was the civil rights division’s No. 2 official from 2009 to 2011. "Jeff Sessions has a unique and uniquely troubled history with the civil rights division. ... From the perspective of the work of the enforcement of civil rights, I think the Sessions pick is a particularly troublesome one — more than anyone else you can think of.” 
 
 The concern at the Justice Department's anti-discrimination unit stems largely from the same accounts of alleged racist remarks and racially tinged incidents that emerged when Sessions was nominated to a district court judgeship in 1986. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard a black lawyer testify that Sessions referred to him as "boy," and another attorney testify that Sessions said about the Ku Klux Klan that he thought the group was "OK, until I heard that they smoked pot." 
 
 Sessions said that was a joke and he denied allegations that he'd used an ugly racial epithet. But his nomination was voted down 10-8, only the second time that had happened in half a century. 
 
 However, the grievances many of the Justice Department's civil rights enforcers have with Sessions go beyond his language to his actions as U.S. attorney in Mobile, where he unsuccessfully prosecuted black civil rights leaders on charges of ballot-tampering. 
 
 One of the activists, who was acquitted, was Albert Turner, a former aide to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil rights groups at the time called the charges a “witch hunt” conducted by the Reagan Justice Department while refusing to prosecute white election officials. Sessions was quoted after the trial as saying Turner "put on a brilliant defense and whipped us fair and square in the courtroom, but I guarantee you there was sufficient evidence for a conviction.” 
 
 "This is a person who got his start as a public figure through prosecutions of voting rights activists for registering people to vote. The enmity the civil rights community has for him is authentically earned," said Bagenstos, now a law professor at the University of Michigan. "The career lawyers in the civil rights division now have a lot of nervousness and the Sessions nomination will make a lot of them who are on the fence about staying or going think a lot more seriously about going." 
 
 Sessions' allies insisted the claims of racial bias and insensitivity are off-base and amount to thinly veiled disagreement with the senator's political views. 
 
 "The only reason folks are criticizing him is because people don't like his conservative principles," said Hans von Spakovsky, a former official in the Justice Department's civil rights division under President George W. Bush. "He's a very good guy. The claims resurrecting these claims of racism are complete and total bull." 
 
 Von Spakovsky said Sessions' critics were intentionally or inadvertently ignoring his efforts to fight racism in his home state. "It was his case that he filed against the KKK that helped break the back of the Klan in Alabama," von Spakovsky said. 
 
 That case was the federal prosecution of two former Klan members for murdering African-American college student Michael Donald in 1981. A former federal prosecutor who worked on the trial, which led to the conviction of two suspects and the execution of one of them, had praise for Sessions. 
 
 "This was during the 1980s when many southern U.S. attorneys were not always welcoming to the Civil Rights Division working in their districts," Barry Kowalski said. "However, Senator Sessions could not have been more supportive of our investigations, and in the Michael Donald case specifically, he personally contributed to making sure his killers were brought to justice." 
 
 Some conservatives said they were unconcerned about Sessions and pleased with the list of lawyers Trump has designated to head up the transition at the Justice Department. 
 
 "My biggest fear with Trump is that he ran as an authoritarian who would ignore the rule of law," said former prosecutor Orin Kerr, who previously described himself as in the "Never Trump" camp. "But Senator Sessions is no authoritarian, and the announced members of the transition team are mainstream and establishment GOP." 
 
 Former Justice official von Spakovsky agreed that there might be a wave of resignations in the civil rights division, but he said that wouldn't be a bad thing because the division's hiring practices have led to an influx of liberal ideologues. 
 
 "There may be an exodus. I hope, frankly, there is," said von Spakovsky, now with the conservative Heritage Foundation. 
 
 An attorney who served at the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton and later as a Democratic counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lisa Graves, said she was worried about Sessions' impact on the civil rights division's work investigating cases of deadly use of force by police. 
 
 "With respect to Sessions' background, I think it’s a really serious question of whether he will at all continue the Justice Department's process of examining these cases where people are shot who are unarmed and often African- American," said Graves, now with the liberal Center for Media and Democracy. "I just don’t have any confidence he'll do the right thing." 
 
 While there was an outpouring of criticism from liberal groups Friday, with some calling Sessions' nomination "shocking" and recounting many of the allegations that torpedoed his judicial nomination three decades ago, those troubled by his nomination as attorney general have no obvious way to block his nomination. 
 
 A spokesman for Trump, Jason Miller, said the president-elect's team is "very confident" Sessions will win Senate approval. 
 
 “Sen. Sessions is someone who is universally respected across party lines in the U.S. Senate,” Miller told reporters on a conference call Friday morning. “We feel very confident that Sen. Sessions has the background and the support to receive confirmation.” 
 
 The Trump spokesman also sought to rebut some of the criticism of Sessions’ civil rights record by noting that he filed several desegregation lawsuits while he was U.S. attorney for the Southern district of Alabama and voted in favor of the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 2006. Miller also mentioned Sessions’ vote to confirm President Barack Obama’s nomination in 2009 of the first African-American attorney general, Eric Holder. 
 
 And the Trump aide noted that one senator who voted against Sessions' judicial nomination in 1986, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, later called that vote “a mistake” and praised Sessions as "egalitarian." Specter died in 2012. 
 
 Indeed, several current Republican senators endorsed their colleague's nomination Friday. Democrats generally expressed concerns about aspects of Sessions' record, but said they were keeping an open mind until confirmation hearings are held — hearings where many of the most sensational allegations against the attorney general nominee seem certain to be re-aired. 
 
 "It's going to be tough," said William Yeomans, who worked in the civil rights division for 23 years and then on the Judiciary Committee under Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). "There will be vigorous opposition from the Democrats and strong opposition from outside groups, but we are in such an extraordinary period." 
 
 "The presidential campaign makes you think that things like racially charged comments or xenophobia aren't disqualifying anymore," he added. "I mean, you elected a president who said many of those things, so it's hard to know what the reaction is going to be." 
 
 Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report. 
 
 Authors: ||||| (Reuters) - Jeff Sessions may be known as a pro-business conservative but as U.S. attorney general he is unlikely to shy away from indicting big companies and individuals for serious white-collar crimes, legal experts said, citing his record as a lawmaker. 
 
 Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) delivers a nominating speech for Republican U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named Sessions, a four-term senator from Alabama and former federal prosecutor, to lead the Justice Department. Sessions, 69, an early supporter of Trump, is expected to accept the cabinet post if confirmed. 
 
 A spokesman for Sessions did not respond to a request for comment. 
 
 Because of the dearth of big banks and companies in his home state, there is little in Sessions’ track record as a federal prosecutor and state attorney general from the 1970s to the 1990s to suggest how he might approach complex cases of corporate malfeasance. 
 
 But a review of his record in the Senate indicates he will likely push for corporate indictments, instead of settling for fines, and may focus on putting more executives in prison, lawyers who specialize in white-collar crime said. 
 
 For example, during a 2010 confirmation hearing for James Cole, Sessions questioned the former U.S. deputy attorney general about the “dangerous” philosophy of not charging companies criminally because of concerns that doing so could lead to bankruptcy and hurt employees and shareholders. 
 
 “Normally, I was taught if they violated a law, you charge them. If they didn’t violate the law, you don’t charge them,” Sessions said during the hearing. 
 
 RENEWED PUSH TO PROSECUTE 
 
 Matthew Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor and lawyer at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, said Sessions’ remarks suggested that he may be more willing than the current administration to require a guilty plea from corporations with less concern for collateral consequences. 
 
 He said Sessions would also likely support the Justice Department’s renewed efforts to prosecute executives, outlined in a policy memo last year by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. 
 
 While an unabashed businessman, Trump was highly critical of Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, accusing his Democratic rival of being beholden to the interests of big investment banks. 
 
 That message resonated with many working class voters who suffered in the financial crisis of 2008 and are still angry that no top-level Wall Street figures have been prosecuted for acts that almost brought down the global financial system. 
 
 “Until we see evidence to the contrary, it appears that the new Justice Department will be one that will seek to hold every individual accountable to the fullest extent. So the stakes may be higher,” Schwartz said. 
 
 NO LENIENCY 
 
 Jackson Sharman, a white-collar defense lawyer in Alabama, said that he believed Sessions would want to be as tough on white-collar as on street criminals. He pointed to Sessions’ recent opposition to a crime bill that would have shown sentencing leniency for non-violent offenders. 
 
 Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and Columbia Law School professor, who has testified before Sessions’ Senate Judiciary Committee, agreed that the Alabama senator will be “a strong supporter” of corporate enforcement. 
 
 In the past, Sessions has come out in favor of tough Justice Department tactics against companies accused of fraud. 
 
 In 2007, corporate counsels pushed for a law that would have stopped the Justice Department from pressuring companies to waive attorney-client privilege during fraud investigations. 
 
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 But during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sessions argued against any such rule, noting that prosecutors regularly pressure street criminals to waive constitutional rights using the threat of tougher penalties if they do not co-operate. 
 
 Sessions said the Justice Department should be able to use similar leverage against corporations. 
 
 Corporate crime “is not easy to prosecute or investigate. They have the best lawyers that you can find, and they utilize all the legitimate tools that they have,” Sessions said. “And you have to be strong... a prosecutor cannot be a weak-kneed person going up against a major corporation in a fraud case.”
– Sen. Jeff Sessions is Donald Trump's pick to be the next attorney general and the Alabaman is expected to bring some major changes to the Justice Department, the Washington Post reports. Aides predict Sessions—a leading opponent of closing Guantanamo Bay—will make national security his main priority, reversing the Obama administration's focus on civil rights. In what some see as a disturbing sign of things to come, he argued passionately last year against a Senate resolution that the US shouldn't ban people from the country because of their religion. If Trump goes through with a ban on Muslim immigration, it will be Sessions' job to help put it into effect. In other coverage: Former officials in the Justice Department's civil rights division tell Politico that the appointment of Sessions, who has long faced accusations of racial bias is a "particularly troublesome" one that could cause an exodus from the department. Sessions' defenders say his critics are ignoring his efforts to fight racism in Alabama. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he is "very concerned" about Sessions' civil rights policy. Legal experts tell Reuters that while Sessions has a reputation for being pro-business, his record suggests that he won't shy away from prosecuting corporate wrongdoers. He has argued in favor of being tough on corporate crime and sending white-collar criminals to prison. Forbes reports that the marijuana industry is very worried about what Sessions might do as AG. He has expressed strong anti-marijuana opinions and will have the power to crack down on the drug even in states that have legalized it. It "is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use," he once said. "It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal." The New York Times notes that the choice of Sessions reflects Trump's view that security is a more important concern than civil liberties. Beyond Gitmo, Sessions has also argued in favor of waterboarding and George W. Bush's warrantless wiretaps. The BBC reports that Trump will meet Mitt Romney Saturday for talks, despite harsh words between the two during the GOP primaries. Romney is rumored to be a candidate for secretary of state. "The president-elect wants the best and brightest people to put this country forward: people who supported him, people who didn't support him," a Trump spokesman says.