New reporting once again confirms what’s long been clear: Senate Republicans are shameless hypocrites. Though they spent the week trying to smear Judge Jackson’s character and sentencing record with baseless, debunked attacks, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Tom Cotton all supported Trump-appointed judges with sentencing records that mirror Judge Jackson’s.

The same senators who spent the week shamelessly trying to use victims’ pain to score political points voted to confirm judges with sentencing records similar to Judge Jackson’s: 

New York Times: “Critics of Jackson’s Child Sex Abuse Sentences Backed Judges With Similar Records”

New York Times: “Several Republican senators repeatedly and misleadingly suggested during this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had given uncommonly lenient sentences to felons convicted of child sex abuse crimes. But all of the Republican critics had previously voted to confirm judges who had given out prison terms below prosecutor recommendations, the very bar they accused Judge Jackson of failing to clear.”

New York Times: “But Mr. Hawley, Mr. Graham, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Cruz all voted to confirm judges nominated by President Donald J. Trump to appeals courts even though those nominees had given out sentences lighter than prosecutor recommendations in cases involving images of child sex abuse.”

So we’ll say this again for good measure: Judge Jackson’s sentencing record is firmly within the mainstream for federal judges – including judges appointed by Donald Trump – and these baseless attacks have been conclusively debunked: 

ABC News: “An ABC News review of federal judges appointed and confirmed during the Trump administration found nearly a dozen had handed down below-guideline sentences in cases of defendants viewing, possessing, transporting or distributing child pornography.”

PolitiFact: “Hawley, and Cruz, emphasized how much shorter Jackson’s sentences were than what prosecutors sought. She appears to have company, including among judges elevated to federal appeals courts during the Trump administration.”

CNN: “GOP senators push misleading portrayal of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record on child porn cases”

Washington Post: “Josh Hawley’s misleading attack on Judge Jackson’s sentencing of child-porn offenders”

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