Supreme Court News

How Republicans DISMANTLED Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

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29 March 2022 | By Richard Ahern – In the background of the Ukraine war, another war took place in the confirmation hearing of Biden’s supreme court justice pick, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Republicans have criticized Judge Jackson as being the most far-left justice pick of all time. Her cases as a federal judge support this concerning view, and Republicans grilled her on these issues during the confirmation hearing.

In a remarkable line of questioning, Senator Ted Cruz tore apart Judge Jackson’s past.

The questioning focused on Cruz asking the nominee a question he already knew the answer to, her answering, and then the Senator pulling out evidence to the contrary.

Jackson struggled through the questioning, spending more time thanking the Senator for the questions rather than answering them.

Cruz started by focusing on the Democrat’s favorite subject: race. First, Senator Cruz asked Judge Jackson if she knew what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is. The judge responded by saying she knows what it is but that it doesn’t drive any decisions she makes as a judge.

Cruz responded by quoting a speech she gave about sentencing when she explicitly stated that sentencing “melds together myriad types of law – criminal law, of course… constitutional law, Critical Race Theory….”

This was a common theme from Senator Cruz, when he would contradict her answers by presenting evidence from her past.

When asked if CRT is taught in schools, she responded that it wasn’t and was purely an academic theory.

Here’s the kicker:

Senator Cruz then presented a stream of evidence showing that a school she is a board member of teaches a full curriculum of CRT material.

Cruz presented books the school uses, such as “Critical Race Theory – an introduction”, “How to be an anti-racist”, and “Anti-racist baby”.

Her response was perhaps more shocking because she said she didn’t know the school teaches CRT, despite being on the board!

Senator Cruz then moved on to one of the more controversial subjects of the hearing, her apparent lenient sentencing of child pornography offenders.

Cruz showed a chart of her sentences as a judge in child porn cases. In every case where she had discretion on sentencing, she sentenced child pornography offenders to sentences well below the guidelines and the prosecutor’s recommendations.

On average, Judge Jackson sentenced child porn offenders to 47.2% less time in prison than the prosecutor recommended. This was a springboard for further questioning from Republican senators.

Senator Josh Hawley focussed on the specifics of these child porn cases.

Senator Hawley pointed out that in one case, United States v. Hawkins, the prosecutor recommended 24 months in prison, and the sentencing guidelines suggested 97-121 months. However, Judge Jackson sentenced the offender in this case to a measly three months in prison for possessing child porn of children as young as eight years old, including children being violently raped.

Perhaps more concerning were her statements made during the sentencing of Hawkins, when she downplayed the crime by saying the victims in the pornography were Hawkins’s “peers” because he was only 18 years old.

It’s also important to note that Hawkins re-offended a few years later after his 3-month sentence.

Despite the overwhelming evidence presented during the hearing that Judge Jackson is soft on child porn crime, her answers were very unresponsive. She defended herself by blaming Congress, yet Congress set the guidelines that she went substantially below. She also repeated that she believes the crimes are “egregious” because she is a mother but did not explain her pattern on sentencing.

Jackson was also questioned about her sentencing for drug crimes.

Senator Tom Cotton questioned Jackson on her lenient sentencing of a self-described drug “kingpin”, Keith Young, who was arrested for running a drug business out of his house where his kids lived.

Because of his criminal history, Young faced a mandatory sentence of 20 years, but Senator Cotton pointed out that Judge Jackson had apologized to Young during sentencing in 2018 for not being able to give him a lighter sentence.

It gets worse…

In 2020, after a change in the law, Judge Jackson resentenced Young to a lighter sentence. Senator Cotton said she shouldn’t have done this because the change in law was not “retroactive”, which meant it did not apply to criminals sentenced before the law changed.

Jackson deflected the question by blaming Congress for changing the law but didn’t address the critical issue of it not being retroactive. Senator Cotton scolded her, saying, “you chose to rewrite the law because you were sympathetic to a fentanyl drug kingpin….”

The primary concerns of Republicans are that Judge Jackson is an activist judge chosen by Biden to advance far-left ideologies that go against the Constitution.

Senator Marsha Blackburn powerfully pointed out that Judge Jackson said in her opening statement that she decided cases “consistent with her judicial oath” but did not once mention the Constitution.

Senator Blackburn said, “I wish you had said consistent with the Constitution of the United States.”

Here’s the bottom line:

The Constitution is the supreme law of the United States and should be at the heart of every Supreme Court decision. Therefore, a judge that doesn’t use the Constitution as the center of their philosophy is a red flag for being an activist and radical left justice.

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