Fact check: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson child porn sentences 'pretty mainstream'
Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson open this week amid a flurry of misleading allegations by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that the nominee has a "long record" of letting child porn offenders "off the hook" during sentencing.
"In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders," Hawley tweeted Thursday, highlighting nine cases from her time as a federal District Court judge.
While court records show that Jackson did impose lighter sentences than federal guidelines suggested, Hawley's insinuation neglects critical context, including the fact that the senator himself has voted to confirm at least three federal judges who also engaged in the same practice.
Federal appeals court Judges Joseph Bianco of the Second Circuit and Andrew Brasher of the Eleventh Circuit, both Trump appointees, had each previously sentenced defendants convicted of possessing child pornography to prison terms well below federal guidelines at the time they were confirmed with Hawley's support, an ABC review of court records found.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/fact-check-judge-ketanji-brown-011745397.html
Democrats push back on GOP Sen. Hawley's 'smear'
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat opened the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday by brushing away attacks from Republicans who claimed she had been too lenient on “child porn offenders.”
The committee's chair, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., referred to the allegation in his opening remarks. And by way of rebutting it, he cited an unlikely source: Andrew McCarthy, a conservative former prosecutor and National Review columnist.
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Multiple analyses of Jackson’s record have concluded that Hawley’s criticism of her was misleading. And former federal prosecutor McCarthy called the Missouri senator’s allegation against Jackson “meritless to the point of demagoguery.”
While opposing Jackson’s nomination, McCarthy wrote that “the implication that [Jackson] has a soft spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jackson-confirmation-hearing-democrats-push-back-on-gop-sen-hawleys-smear-173910444.html
Pretty boy Hawley is trying to look tough.
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