Hawley, pointing to Jackson’s time on the bench, suggested Jackson had been “lenient” on child sexual predators and “soft on crime.” He said the Senate Judiciary Committee needed to know whether Jackson would protect the nation’s children or the sexual predators.
“It’s her record, Brian, is really what concerns me,” Hawley outlined. “And in particular, just to take one example — if you look at what she has done with child porn offenders. While she has been on the bench, Judge Jackson, in every case in which she has had a child porn offender in front of her, she has given that person a lenient sentence — lower than what the federal guidelines recommend, lower than what prosecutors from the government sought. And in fact, she did it in case after case. And going back to her time on the Sentencing Commission, Brian, before she was on the bench. She wanted to eliminate the current mandatory minimum sentence for child porn offenders. As far back as law school, she talked about questioning whether child sex offender registries are even constitutional.”