Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insists that the hearings for Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court will be “respectful.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), concurs, promising a “fair and respectful” process. Republicans and senior staff tell The Washington Post (anonymously, of course) that “spending significant time and effort going after the first Black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court is not worthwhile politically, and that it makes far more sense to focus on pocketbook issues ahead of the midterms.” All of these Republicans have apparently not met the Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Because if a respectful process is what they truly intend, then someone had better do something about the deplorables who sit on that committee and are all eyeing a presidential run: Sens. Ted Cruz (TX), Tom Cotton (AR), and Josh Hawley (MO). Hawley was the first out of the gate with his thinly veiled QAnon call to arms, calling Jackson a protector of pedophiles. Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) was quick to say, “I don’t believe in it being taken seriously.” Ahem.
Like clockwork, or maybe more like crack pipes, the smear is taking hold with Republicans, including these other two monsters on the Judiciary committee: “An aide to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)—the sole female Republican on the committee—said Blackburn plans to raise the issue as well during the hearing, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tweeted in part, ‘We need real answers.’”
Related: Hawley injects QAnon conspiracy theory into Jackson SCOTUS nomination. Democrats should shut it down
That’s the really ugly side of what Republicans are planning to do with their essentially racist narrative against Jackson—that she’s “soft on crime” because of her experience as a public defender. Just one Republican indicates he won’t necessarily pursue that narrative.
“I’m not going to criticize her for any client she’s represented. We’ve all represented clients that we didn’t agree with and in some cases, didn’t even like,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). “But everybody has the right to counsel.” Will he do anything to counter his fellow Republicans when they attack her because of her former clients? No. “You can, if you want to, if that’s what my colleagues want to do,” he said. “I just don’t feel like it’s fair.”
If the QAnon pedophile pizzagate line of questioning gets Hawley nowhere, he’s got another line of attack: She coddles terrorists. As an assistant federal public defender in Washington from 2005 to 2007, one of the cases Jackson worked on was obtaining habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees, specifically in Khi Ali Gul v. Bush. In private practice following her tenure, she contributed to Supreme Court amicus briefs in Guantanamo cases, including the Boumediene v. Bush, the 2008 case in which the Supreme Court established the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention.
In her confirmation hearing for her current seat on the D.C. Circuit, Jackson addressed this, saying she was “keenly and personally mindful of the tragic and deplorable circumstances that gave rise to the U.S. government’s apprehension and detention of the persons who were secured at Guantanamo Bay.” She added that she was “also among the many lawyers who were keenly aware of the threat that the 9-11 attacks had posed to foundational constitutional principles, in addition to the clear danger to the people of the United States.”
Never mind that the Supreme Court felt it was necessary to try to apply constitutional parameters onto what is an extra-constitutional project by the U.S. government, and that Jackson was representing the rule of law in this work. The “constitutional lawyer” Hawley is going to try to make hay of it and put her on the side of the terrorists.
“I’d like to get some better understanding of the arguments that she made—both as a public defender and in private practice—in terms of sanctioning the government, arguments she made about the prisoners themselves, the terrorists themselves and then her position on having those people tried in civilian court,” Hawley said.
Hawley is being condemned for all this, not by his colleagues, but by the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Missourians and the entire nation have come to expect nothing less of a senator who is doing all he can to raise campaign money off his calculatedly obnoxious public spectacles, including his supporting role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection,” the board writes.
“Chances are slim that his antics will be effective in blocking Jackson’s confirmation,” the board writes. “More likely, Republican senators mindful of the pre-midterm optics—low-blow attacks by white men against the first Black woman ever nominated to the Supreme Court—will smartly choose to get as far away from Hawley as they can.”
They could start that distancing right now. They could have a private word with Hawley and tell him to stand down. They could show a single shred of decency. They won’t.
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