Josh Hawley Doubles Down on Ketanji Brown Jackson Smear, Emboldening Conspiracy Theorists

Senator Josh Hawley has doubled down on his smear of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson—one that seemingly echoes conspiracies spread by QAnon—accusing Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee of being soft on child pornography cases. “I just want to know is this a person who is going to protect our kids or who is going to protect child sex predators,” Hawley claimed on Fox & Friends Monday ahead of Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing. A member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hawley went on to raise the allegation in front of Jackson at the first day of hearings Monday, previewing a forthcoming line of questioning. His Senate office also blasted out an interview with an ABC reporter Monday questioning Hawley’s previous support for judges who had ruled similarly to Jackson on child pornography cases. Hawley avoided answering the question, dismissing it as a failed “gotcha” attempt. That audio has been shared by the likes of Mike Cernovich, a far-right personality and proponent of the “Pizzagate” child-sex-ring conspiracy theory.

Hawley debuted his attack in a series of tweets last week, alleging that Jackson has a history of letting “child porn offenders off the hook” both in the courtroom and in her legal writings. A number of other Senate Judiciary Republicans have since bought into the line, including senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Marsha Blackburn, who have reportedly signaled their support for Hawley’s claims. As Media Matters outlined last week, far-right platforms and QAnon conspiracy theorists have repeated Hawley’s accusations in an apparent attempt to tie Jackson to a larger conspiracy that portrays the Democratic Party as a satanic and pedophiliac cabal—one that gained national prominence in 2016 when a gunman entered a D.C. pizza joint alleging high-ranking Democratic officials were using the restaurant for a child sex ring. Yahoo News and YouGov conducted a 2020 survey that found 50% of Trump supporters “think top Democrats are involved in child sex-trafficking.” 

Hawley cited Jackson’s time with the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission, which oversees federal sentencing guidelines, to purport that she “advocated for drastic change in how the law treats sex offenders by eliminating the existing mandatory minimum sentences for child porn.” This appears to be a reference to a 2012 report published by the bipartisan commission, according to The Washington Post, wherein it unanimously recommended lowering mandatory minimums for two types of child-porn offenses without eliminating all statutory mandatory minimums. Additionally, among the U.S. Sentencing Commission members who voted in favor of the 2012 recommendation was Trump appointee Dabney Friedrich, a U.S. District Court judge whose nomination Senate Republicans unanimously supported. Hawley also claimed that Jackson, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, deviated “from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders” during her time on the bench—an accusation divorced from reality. New York University Law professor Rachel Barkow tweeted that Jackson “is doing what most of the federal bench does,” noting that less than 30% of non-production cases get the federally recommended sentence, because nearly every federal judge “realizes these Guidelines are too severe.” Barkow went on to note that the 2012 U.S. Sentencing Commission report addresses “real flaws with the child pornography Guidelines that Congress has still failed to address—precisely because people like Hawley create the false impression that fixing this would somehow harm children. This is such a mockery of the constitutional responsibility to advise and consent. This is pure political theater.”

One Fox News contributor has pushed back against Hawley’s claims. “What Hawley has done is conflate all of the offenses that are under the category of sex offender and suggest that [Jackson] is soft on all of that stuff, and I don’t think the case is there for that,” National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy said during a Monday appearance on Fox News. In a Sunday column, McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, wrote that Hawley’s attack on Jackson is an unfounded “smear.” “Contrary to Hawley’s suggestion, however, she appears to have followed the guidelines, at the low end of the sentencing range, as most judges do,” McCarthy explained, adding that “other than the fact that Congress wanted to look as though it was being tough on porn, there’s no good reason for the mandatory minimum in question––and it’s unjust in many instances.”

On Monday, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin opened Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation process by referencing the McCarthy column. “[Hawley’s] baseless charges are unfair. A conservative National Review columnist called claims brought by one of my colleagues, “meritless to the point of demagoguery,’” Durbin said. “They fly in the face of pledges my colleagues made that they would approach your nomination with civility and respect.” The Biden administration has repeatedly denounced Hawley’s claims. White House press secretary Jen Psaki called it a “last-ditch, eve-of-hearing desperation attack on her record on sentencing in sexual offense cases,” during her press briefing Friday.

This line of attack appears to be the GOP’s main messaging strategy as it desperately attempts to torpedo Biden’s first Supreme Court nomination. And within the right-wing media machine, Hawley’s media blitz has succeeded in cementing the false claim that Jackson is particularly lenient toward child predators. The Federalist, Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Daily Caller, and Daily Wire all regurgitated the smear after Hawley’s initial tweets went viral.

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