Demanding answers from Judge Jackson in heated tones and interrupting her repeatedly when she tried to answer, they infuriated Democrats on the panel,
Demanding answers from Judge Jackson in heated tones and interrupting her repeatedly when she tried to answer, they infuriated Democrats on the panel, at one point prompting a shouting match between Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the committee.
In one particularly heated exchange, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, pressed Judge Jackson about why she had not been tougher on consumers of child sex abuse imagery, saying that his view was “put their ass in jail.”
Judge Jackson outlined how such cases had changed since Congress passed a law that enhanced sentences based on the number of images found in a defendant’s possession. At the time of the law, such images primarily came through the mail, and the number of images indicated the lengths to which a person had gone to obtain them.
But, she tried to explain over Mr. Graham’s repeated interruptions, in the internet age, huge stores of images can be acquired with a few clicks of a mouse.
“You can be doing this for 15 minutes, and all of a sudden you are looking at 30, 40, 50 years in prison,” she said. Mr. Graham interjected, saying, “Good — absolutely good.”
The flashes of temper from Mr. Graham were particularly striking coming from a senator who voted less than a year ago to confirm Judge Jackson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. His aggressive questioning of Judge Jackson this week suggested that he was unlikely to back her for the nation’s highest court.
It also drew an angry response from Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, a former Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the senior member of the Senate, who said he had not seen the level of disrespect shown to Judge Jackson in his 48 years in the chamber.
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