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Sen. Josh Hawley, perhaps best known for his fist pump in support of Capitol protesters shortly before the Jan. 6 riot, spouted dangerous and misleading allegations this week about Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
And the allegations hew closely to claims we’ve heard from QAnon conspiracy theorists.
In a series of tweets Wednesday, Hawley claimed that Jackson, who previously worked as a public defender and served as the vice chair and commissioner of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, handed down soft sentences to child pornographers. Jackson’s record, he claimed, “endangers our children.”
The “liberals are child predators” line of attack has become popular among backers of QAnon, the racist, pro-Trump conspiracy theory. In 2017, the theory gained national recognition when a gunman entered a Washington, D.C., pizzeria to self-investigate QAnon claims of a Democrat-run child sex trafficking ring there. Those claims were, of course, wildly false.
Hawley didn’t mention the conspiracy by name Wednesday, but his allegations were tinged with the same hysteria.
His tweets cherry-picked a number of Jackson’s court rulings in child pornography cases, in which she sought sentences that were below the federal sentencing guidelines at the time, to make his claim that she’s sympathetic to child pornographers. But the claim doesn’t hold water.
Even in the cases Hawley cited, Jackson sought yearslong prison terms for the offenders. And her sentences were consistent with legal experts' arguments that find the sentencing guidelines for receiving or sharing child pornography to be too harsh at times.
Rather than deferring to Hawley’s fearmongering, I recommend you actually read the experts' opinions. The point of reforming these guidelines isn’t merely to benefit the accused, but rather to ensure the most dangerous offenders are properly held accountable for their crimes.
In his tweets, Hawley also included a screenshot of a court exchange in which Jackson told a psychiatrist she, “mistakingly assumed that child pornography offenders are pedophiles.”
But, as Vice noted, Hawley’s screengrab cut off the full exchange. The psychiatrist advised Jackson that her previous assumption was correct, to which she said, “OK.”
Republicans are preparing to use that “soft on child predators” claim to attack Jackson during next week’s confirmation hearings, Politico reported Thursday.
If confirmed, Jackson would become the first former public defender to sit on the Supreme Court. Her position on the bench could help curb the long tradition of disparate and undue sentencing in the judicial system.
Republicans know and fear this. For years, they’ve attacked former public defenders — who are essential to a democratic justice system — for doing their jobs: providing legal aid to those accused of crimes.
Hawley’s line of attack just proves there’s no limit to the unwarranted claims they’re willing to lob as they work to derail these nominees. Jackson is just their latest target.