Sen. Lindsey Graham was a simmering mess of grievances during his questioning of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing—but Jackson wasn’t the reason for his grievances. Instead of taking his time to question her closely about her record, Graham showed how little Republicans have to hold against Jackson by fuming about things other people have said and done, at times to Jackson’s obvious bewilderment.
Graham questioned Jackson at length about her faith: “What faith are you, by the way?” When she answered that she’s a nondenominational Protestant, he followed up, “Could you fairly judge a Catholic?” When she tried to speak to her record of judging people from all groups fairly, he interrupted her, saying, “I believe you can.” But that didn’t set Graham’s religion questions to rest.
“I’m just asking this question because … how important is your faith to you?”
“Senator, personally my faith is very important,” Jackson responded carefully. “But as you know, there’s no religious test in the Constitution under Article VI and—“
“There will be none with me,” Graham interrupted. After Jackson spoke to the importance of setting aside religion in judicial decisions, he said, “I couldn’t agree more, and I believe you can.” Then he dove right back in: “On a scale of one to 10, how faithful would you say you are?”
None of this totally inappropriate questioning about personal faith was about Jackson. Not one word. It was all Graham’s attempt to get back at Sen. Dianne Feinstein for questioning the degree to which Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s faith—which involved serving as a "handmaid" in an insular, hierarchical Christian group—might influence her judicial philosophy. Graham also complained of “people on late-night television” talking about Barrett’s faith.
But if Graham thought he had something damaging to use against Jackson, he wouldn’t have wasted his time on this.
Similarly, Graham spent time questioning Jackson about which outside groups supported her and opposed the potential nomination of Judge Michelle Childs, even though Jackson had nothing to do with any of that. Graham asked Jackson if she had had any interaction with a series of groups, including Demand Justice, with her answering no to each one. But, of course, answering in the negative was not enough.
“Did you notice people from the left were pretty much cheering you on?”
“A lot of people were cheering me on,” Jackson answered with a smile.
“That’s true. Did you know there are a lot of people from the left trying to destroy Michelle Childs? Did you notice that?”
“Senator, a lot of people were supporting various people for this nomination.”
”So you’re saying you didn’t know there was concerted effort to disqualify Judge Childs from South Carolina,” Graham said, going on at length about how unfair this was as he tried somehow to tie Jackson to the criticism of Childs’ record. “You didn’t know that all these people were declaring war on Judge Childs?”
“Senator, I did not,” Jackson said, looking and sounding upset.
“I’m not saying you did,” Graham responded, sounding intentionally unconvincing. “You said you didn’t know, I’ll take you at your word.”
Again, this is not the line of questioning of a senator who thinks he has something seriously concerning about a Supreme Court nominee. This is the line of questioning of someone who has nothing substantive to flag in Jackson’s record—aside from suggesting that detainees at Guantánamo Bay don't deserve the due process rights she had fought for—and is looking to muddy the waters by attacking people and groups he can very tangentially tie to her.
But Graham was building to something. At the end of his questioning, he said, “Every group that wants to pack the court, that believes this court is a bunch of right-wing nuts that are going to destroy America, that consider the Constitution trash, all wanted you picked.” In translation, Graham doesn’t have anything against Jackson—for whose confirmation to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia he voted just last year. But he has to build a case against her because he is a loyal Republican, so he’s pinning his case on a whole bunch of people who are not Jackson, most of whom she has never met.
Graham’s presidential ambitions are presumably behind him, unlike several of his fellow Judiciary Committee Republicans. But he still wants to be someone who matters in the Trump-era Republican Party, and his contortions to make that happen show both how truly pathetic a human being he is and how morally bankrupt and intellectually corrupt his entire party is.
