Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Bonus: Harry Litman Day 3 Ketanji Brown Jackson Confirmation Hearing Recap

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson rises above the ridiculous conspiracy-filled attacks of Republican Senators. Harry Litman breaks down day 3 of the confirmation hearings. Subscribe to Talking Feds here: https://www.talkingfeds.com/ Subscribe to Legal AF here: https://pod.link/1580828595 Follow Harry on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/harrylitman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, Midas Mighty Nation. Okay, Harry Littman here from Talking Feds. Here is your personal report of day three from the Katanji Brown Jackson hearings. It is over for her a grueling and pretty darn unpleasant. 18 hours or so over two days. And I think relative to yesterday, you could say today was

Dejavu, but double time. Dejavu, because there was nothing really new in substance. And each of the questioners was a little bit shorter, though, a few Republicans didn't pay much attention to the time limits and went over, and there were really contentious back and forced between the Republican Senators and Durban and Leahy, that is the Democratic senior citizens who had seen better, more deckerous confirmation hearings. But the big point is, you know, you might have wondered yesterday they were aggressive with her very aggressive and She came out very well as I suggested would they

Double down or would they kind of go try to go a little bit lighter more gentle But make the same points answer they double down and re double down. It was probably the most brow beating I'm not, arrogant treatment of a Supreme Court nominee, someone who's likely soon to be a justice in history. And it certainly wasn't a good look that is she's the first African-American woman. But for whatever reason, the people who are there for their presidential ambitions and looking to their own base, senators, crews, Graham, Holly, in particular made the decision. They hadn't really drawn blood yesterday.

And so they went, raw red meat this time. They were really very, very aggressive back and forth between them and the nominee. The short, the short version for Katani Brown Jackson is she stayed on her game. She stayed calm. She had hit a kind of stride, I thought yesterday where she was able to be to push back and communicate a little bit, this is some stupid quest, ask questions, but I'm going to respond anyway, but give a little push back. She was able to basically keep to that tone.

She displayed a little bit of impatience once or twice as she was asked for the 12th and 15th time to answer the same questions. At one point point she said, I'm gonna stand on what I said before. But kind of stunning exchanges with Lindsey Graham who I thought yesterday might be in play, but I think is now a loss cause for her. And Ted Cruz, who asked questions

and then just brazenly interrupted, just wouldn't let her get a word out. And just basically, we're trying to bully her and just get out their talking points. So it was clear that this had nothing to do with her qualifications and nothing to do with how they looked to 80% of the country. But this was a play to the base. They made the decision.

They know probably better than we do. They're getting these red meat talking points out was more important. There was a little bit of really crazy stuff involving trying to pin her with critical race theory or a question of what is a woman? You know, as if that was, you know, she somehow had the answer for all the hot button cultural issues in the country.

She definitely parried those. I'm an asthmatic man. Could I decide I was an Asian man? Would I have the ability to be an Asian man? But the big thing that went again and again and again and again was her treatment of child sex offender cases. There's a handful, literally a handful of her hundreds of sentencing where yes, her sentences were low relative to the guidelines

but completely of a piece without every judge and the every judge, 80% literally of judges in the country handle it. And the unanimous Sensing Commission handles it, which is three Republicans for Democrats, because the guidelines were written for a pre-internet age and now we're in an age where somebody can acquire many, many images in 15 seconds.

At one point, Lindsey Graham, she tried to explain this Lindsey Graham screamed at her. I think I wrote this down saying, fine, 15 seconds, then put their ass in jail for 30, 40, 50 years. He had sort of re-umed his guys, if you remember, at the Kavanaugh hearings, where he was a twisted kind of grimace of, you know, spinning anger. So that was wild and incredibly disrespectful to a nominee. And that pretty much the same thing with Holly. Nothing new, but they are going to try to make a household name over the next few days of one person in particular Wesley Hawkins who she gave a low sentence to a very odd defendant who was from a religious family supposedly was at first curious and everyone recommended a low sentence she gave a very low one to and then he did become a recidivist. So he's going to be their poster child for this for what? For a proposition that

somehow she coddles sex offenders, which she was able to again, rebut strongly based on her, you know, her status as a parent, how bad these cases are, etc. Then, sort of the dramatic centerpiece of the day after all that she had absorbed all these blows, Cory Booker came in and went transcendent again, even more so, I would say, then yesterday, this guy really is showing his sort of presidential chops because he not only was supportive of her and sort of really kind of reanimating her after the bruising behavior she'd gotten at the hands of the Republicans, but he did it with a sense of faith and joy.

And he honestly brought tears to a lot of people in the room. She herself was wiping away tears. He said, you're going to make it. God is with you, but it wasn't at all kind of cliched. It really was inspiring. Like sort of a great, he combined kind of great preacher skills with really sort real political skills. Very, very impressive and probably will be remembered as the centerpiece of the day, maybe even the week.

But don't worry, my sister. Don't worry. God has got you. And how do I know that? Because you're here. What comes now, tomorrow, there's going to be a... She's done. Deep, deep breath.

She really had a rough 18 hours, but whether it had fine, tomorrow, we'll have panels on both sides, people for her and against her. The four-her are very strong sort of academics and judges. The against her is a, there's one member of a state group who will be worried, you know, apparently expressing concern about the child pornography theme and the like.

The sort of big point now, I'll end by briefly saying, it's apparent that the last stand of the Republicans is to put huge pressure on the Democrats, old buddy Joe Manchin, who has betrayed them more than once, but has never gone off or abide in judicial nominee seems very unlikely here, but they're trying to really settle him with somehow himself being soft on child pornography or whatever if he doesn't vote against or so, a lot of pressure on him. Then on the other hand,

you know, Mitt Romney has said he's gonna meet with her and make up his mind, same with Collins and Murkowski, who voted for before, Tom Tilles praised her actually in the committee. I personally think she's, you know, much more likely to get a few Republicans than have it be 50-50, but they're gonna make one final emotional sort of

demagogic standpointed right at Joe Manchin and the Dan Taf, to hope that he holds, a hope that's been betrayed in the past, but I think it's probably pretty safe. So there you have it. A grueling day and emotional day at the end, a kind of buoyant day from Booker, and probably she comes to the finish line breathing very heavy, but the almost certain, I want to say, or extremely likely next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and first ever African-American woman. There you have it, Midas Mighty. This is Harry Littman.

Appreciate you're having joined me these last three days and look forward to talking to you again, perhaps, as she's on the floor for today, signing off.