Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) dramatically stormed out of Tuesday’s confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson,capping off a half-hour “festivus” of grievance by melting down over his desire for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to remain open indefinitely.
Graham, who has already voted twice to confirm Jackson to the federal bench, devoted much of his Q&A session on Tuesday to both airing a host of conservative grievances and seemingly finding any reason to justify not voting to place Jackson on the Supreme Court.
Apparently, Jackson’s previous work representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay as a public defender was just the opening Graham—an extreme war hawk—needed.
While justifying the need for the detention camp to remain open to hold prisoners in the ongoing War on Terror, Graham also asserted that the recidivism rate of detainees discharged is exceptionally high.
Following Graham’s grilling of Jackson about a legal deposition she filed on behalf of detainees in which the Republican senator argued she accused the government “of acting as war criminals,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) calmly offered some additional context.
“On the issue of Guantanamo, 39 detainees remain. It’s $450 million per year. Each of these detainees is being held at the expense of $12 or $13 million per year. If they would be incarcerated in Florence, Colorado, the supermax federal prison, the amount would be dramatically less. Since 2009, with the beginning of the Obama Administration, the repeat rate of Guantanamo detainees is five percent.”
This absolutely set the South Carolina lawmaker off.
After arguing about the recidivism rate, he also demanded that Durbin declare whether he supported the “indefinite detention” of Gitmo detainees in federal prison, claiming that they are combatants in a world war.
Sen. Cotton blasts Ketanji Brown Jackson for reducing drug dealer sentence using Trump criminal justice reform law
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., peppered President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson with questions Tuesday over her reduction of the prison sentence of a convicted drug dealer using guidelines set forth in a criminal justice reform law signed by former President Donald Trump.
During the first full day of questioning at Jackson’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cotton, a conservative hard-liner, focused on the case of Keith Young, a Washington, D.C., man convicted in 2018 of drug trafficking and weapons charges. Police found Young with 2 kilograms of fentanyl-laced heroin, a gun and 170 rounds of ammunition. Due to a sentencing rule based on Young’s prior conviction on a minor drug charge, Jackson, then a federal district judge, handed down a 20-year prison sentence.
But in December 2018, Trump signed into law the First Step Act, a sweeping criminal justice reform bill. It includes a provision stating that drug sentences would only face a mandatory increase if the prior conviction was for a felony.
“Congress changed the law, Congress decided the old penalty, the old crime was no longer eligible for the increased sentence,” Jackson said in response to Cotton’s questioning. “So what I determined under those circumstances was that I would re-sentence Mr. Young to the penalty that Congress had decided was appropriate.”
Cotton, however, argued that the law did not allow for judges to reduce sentences retroactively.
“Congress did change the law in the First Step Act, it was a big mistake. But Congress specifically did not make it retroactive,” said Cotton, who has been teasing a White House bid in 2024. “You chose to rewrite the law because you were sympathetic to a drug fentanyl kingpin.”
“Respectfully, senator, I disagree,” Jackson replied.
READ FULL ARTICLE & VIDEO HERE: https://www.thedailybeast.com/lindsey-graham-melts-down-and-storms-off-during-ketanji-brown-jackson-hearing
”THIS WOMAN IS SICK AND DOESN’T DESERVE TO BE IN THE SUPREME COURT. WE ALREADY GOT PEDOPHILES BEING SENTENCED LEAST OR BEING RELEASED TOO EARLY DOING THE SAME SHIT. AMERICA SUPPORTS THAT SHIT 100% COMMENT DOWN BELOW,
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