WASHINGTON — The White House sought Thursday to combat a sharp attack against President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee by the same Republican senator who led the unsuccessful effort in the Senate to overturn Biden’s election.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., posted a lengthy Twitter thread Wednesday evening that portrayed federal appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as taking a soft approach on child pornography cases during her tenure as a federal district judge from 2013 to 2021.
In the thread, Hawley pointed to seven sex offense cases in which he said Jackson handed down sentences that were below federal sentencing guidelines.
“This is a disturbing record for any judge, but especially one nominated to the highest court in the land. Protecting the most vulnerable shouldn’t be up for debate. Sending child predators to jail shouldn’t be controversial,” Hawley said on Twitter Wednesday evening.
Hawley’s criticism threatens to derail what had been a largely cordial confirmation process to this point just days before Jackson’s nationally televised hearings are set to begin Monday.
Hawley, who has voted against more Biden nominees than any other senator, has never been a crucial swing vote that the White House needs to win to ensure Jackson’s confirmation. But as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, next week he’ll be one of 11 Republicans with an opportunity to grill her about her record.
The White House initially declined to comment on Hawley’s Twitter attack Wednesday evening, but by Thursday afternoon White House press secretary Jen Psaki attacked the Missouri Republican by name for making what she called “faulty accusations” about Jackson’s record.
“Attempts to smear and discredit her history and her work are not borne out in fact,” Psaki said Thursday in response to Hawley’s attack.
Psaki said that “in the vast majority of cases involving child sex crimes the sentences Judge Jackson imposed were consistent with or above what the government or U.S. Probation recommended.”
Hawley vs. Biden administration
Hawley was the first senator to announce plans to object to Biden’s 2020 Electoral College Victory. He raised his fist in solidarity to a pro-Trump crowd shortly before the Jan. 6 attack last year and has since used the image on fundraising material.
Hawley weathered the initial backlash after Jan. 6, which included losing donors and the cancellation of a book contract with his original publisher. A fixture of conservative cable news, he has emerged as a top fundraiser and potential 2024 presidential contender.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly promised a respectful process as the Senate considers Jackson, a Miami Palmetto graduate who would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court if confirmed. Republicans have also signaled that they expect Jackson to be confirmed, as Democrats can confirm her nomination with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
But Hawley has signaled that he will press Jackson on both her handling of sex offense cases and her work as a defense attorney on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees, two highly sensitive issues that could lead to contentious exchanges at the hearings, potentially making it more difficult to win over other Republican votes.
In addition to scrutinizing Jackson’s sentences as a judge, Hawley, a former Missouri attorney general, cited quotations from a 2012 hearing of the U.S. Sentencing Commission on child pornography. Jackson was the commission’s vice chair at the time.
The remarks were part of a line of questioning to a Department of Justice official about distinctions between types of offenders. The White House said in a statement Thursday that Hawley had “cherry-picked” the quotations, a point which Psaki expanded on during the afternoon briefing.
“There are arguments that have been made out there by Sen. Hawley and others that where he took a snippet of a transcript out of context when in fact Judge Jackson was repeating something that a witness said in order to ask a question about their testimony,” Psaki said, noting that the Sentencing Commission report that resulted from the hearings was approved unanimously by the bipartisan commission.
Hawley said Jackson’s past comments and rulings on the issues are germane to her consideration of the high court.
“I mean, these are her cases, not mine. I mean, this is her record, not mine … She’s been touted as someone whose record on the bench is what qualifies for the court. So she’s going to have to answer these questions,” Hawley told reporters at the Capitol Thursday.
He also pushed back on the notion that his probing of the issue violated Republicans’ promise of a respectful process.
“If we can’t ask nominees about our judicial record, then why do we have a committee? What they did to Kavanaugh was character assassination,” Hawley said, referencing the sexual assault allegations that were investigated as part of the hearings on Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Asked about whether Hawley’s attack could make it more difficult to win over other Republican votes, specifically moderate Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who have both backed Jackson in the past, Psaki sought to tie Hawley to failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
Moore lost a 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones, who is now shepherding Jackson’s nomination for the White House, after facing allegations of sexual misconduct.
“I’m not sure that someone who refused to tell people whether he would vote for Roy Moore is an effective and credible messenger on this,” Psaki said.
Shortly after, Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary committee along with Hawley, took to Twitter to criticize “the White House’s whataboutist response to Judge Jackson’s very real record in child pornography cases” as ”dismissive, dangerous, and offensive.”
“We need real answers,” Lee wrote.
Hawley, who had launched his 2018 Senate campaign in Missouri around the same time, had called on Moore to drop out if the allegations were true, but he hedged on whether or not he would vote for him. Even before Psaki had invoked Moore’s name, Hawley accused the White House of engaging in “juvenile histrionics” rather than addressing his questions.
Guantanamo Bay detainee defense work
The White House has also been seeking to head off potential controversy over Jackson’s defense work on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees, another topic Hawley is likely to bring up during the hearing. Jackson worked as a federal public defender from 2005 to 2007 at the height of the War on Terror.
“Jackson represented a number of detainees — she pegged the number of four at the public defender’s office. Those cases were assigned to her. She volunteered to continue that representation in private practice, which I think is interesting, and frankly, from my point of view, a little concerning,” Hawley said last week following his meeting with the judge, noting that the issue would likely come up during the hearings.
A White House official said that Jackson’s Guantanamo cases were assigned both during her time at the federal public defender’s office and later the international law firm Morrison & Foerster, where one of her assigned clients was a group of more than 20 retired federal judges who were arguing that the reliance of evidence extracted through torture was unconstitutional.
“Public defenders do not choose their clients and they are obligated to do their job competently. There is also a long tradition of former public defenders in both parties holding high office, including the President and Senator Wicker. The real disagreement any person criticizing Judge Jackson on these grounds has is with the Constitution, not with her,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told the Herald in a statement.
A group of former Obama administration officials, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, also sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee members Wednesday. The letter cited 2009 comments from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the committee, which defended Guantanamo defense attorneys against political attacks.
“This system of justice that we’re so proud of in America requires the unpopular to have an advocate and every time a defense lawyer fights to make the government do their job, that defense lawyer has made us all safer,” Graham, who has served as a defense attorney in military court, said at the time, which was highlighted in the letter.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations compared Jackson’s defense work on behalf of detainees to Founding Father John Adams’ defense of British soldiers after the Boston Massacre.
“Remarking on his defense of these English soldiers, President Adams said it was ‘one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my Country.’ Americans and the detainees at Guantánamo both deserve justice and a fair trial,” Robert McCaw, CAIR’s director of government affairs, said in a statement Wednesday.
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McClatchy’s Alex Roarty contributed to this report.
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