Verdict with Ted Cruz - March 24, 2022


Everything About Judge Jackson


Episode Stats


Length

44 minutes

Words per minute

166.55652

Word count

7,393

Sentence count

547

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

33

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz has been on Capitol Hill grilling Joe Biden s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson. Today, we can get the expert advice of a man who is in the room and doing a lot of that grilling today: Ted Cruz.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.460 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.480 Very serious allegations about Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee,
00:00:09.120 Ketanji Brown Jackson,
00:00:10.800 accusations that she has gone soft on peddlers of child pornography
00:00:16.360 and has a track record of going soft on them,
00:00:19.840 and accusations that she supports critical race theory.
00:00:23.460 But you don't need to take my word for it.
00:00:25.140 We can get the expert advice of a man who is in the room
00:00:28.840 and doing a lot of that grilling today on Capitol Hill.
00:00:31.360 He's just come from the Capitol.
00:00:32.640 Now in the studio with us, this is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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00:04:19.860 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:04:21.860 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:04:23.200 Senator, this is bringing me back
00:04:24.980 to the earliest days of Verdict.
00:04:28.380 Fortunately, it's not two in the morning right now,
00:04:30.740 though you have been at the Capitol all day.
00:04:33.320 You have been in the confirmation hearings
00:04:35.960 for Ketanji Brown-Jackson,
00:04:38.500 and you've been doing a lot of the grilling
00:04:40.520 of Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
00:04:43.020 So where does it stand?
00:04:45.420 Well, you're right.
00:04:46.060 This is reminiscent of when Verdict first started,
00:04:48.340 and we did all day long of the impeachment trial
00:04:51.360 in the Senate and then headed over to the studio
00:04:53.080 late at night to record Verdict.
00:04:54.560 Today, I've spent all day long in the confirmation hearing
00:04:59.940 for Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson,
00:05:02.380 and it's the end of the day,
00:05:04.200 and so headed over to the studio to record this tonight.
00:05:06.420 So it's Tuesday night that we're recording this,
00:05:08.300 and there were a lot of fireworks today.
00:05:10.460 I'll say it started off fairly quiet,
00:05:13.580 but it didn't stay quiet.
00:05:15.280 I had the opportunity to question Judge Jackson
00:05:19.980 this afternoon, shortly after lunch,
00:05:22.240 and there were two main topics I raised,
00:05:25.880 both of which I think are concerning.
00:05:28.160 The first is critical race theory.
00:05:30.460 Now, we've talked a lot about critical race theory,
00:05:33.180 and Judge Jackson had given a speech at a law school
00:05:38.400 where she described how sentencing involves lots of factors,
00:05:44.220 including critical race theory.
00:05:45.760 So she'd laid it out as part of,
00:05:48.360 presumably, the job of a judge in imposing sentences.
00:05:51.140 So I started off by asking her,
00:05:53.680 you know, what is critical race theory?
00:05:55.900 And her initial response was essentially,
00:05:58.840 I have no idea.
00:05:59.780 Well, critical race theory also began at the law school
00:06:02.680 that the two of you went to.
00:06:04.400 That's exactly right.
00:06:05.420 It was born at Harvard Law School.
00:06:07.180 It grew out of Harvard Law School.
00:06:09.160 It grew out of critical legal theory,
00:06:11.460 which came from Harvard Law School,
00:06:12.900 and that, in turn, was a Marxist movement.
00:06:15.280 She knew all that.
00:06:16.200 She just didn't want to admit it.
00:06:17.420 And so her answer was,
00:06:18.620 well, that has nothing to do with my job as a judge.
00:06:22.200 At which point, I turned to her quote
00:06:24.600 that she apparently had forgotten about,
00:06:26.600 where she said,
00:06:28.400 sentencing involves lots of things,
00:06:30.000 including critical race theory.
00:06:31.100 And I said, well, can you explain to us?
00:06:33.760 Apparently, you think it's relevant to your job,
00:06:35.980 so tell us what it means.
00:06:37.940 And again, she just kind of dodged and said, 0.87
00:06:40.340 well, well, it's not relevant to my job as a judge.
00:06:44.400 It's a policy question in sentencing
00:06:46.900 that critical race theory is relevant to.
00:06:49.720 And I said, okay, well, that's fine.
00:06:51.080 In addition to serving as a judge,
00:06:53.860 you were the vice chairman of the sentencing commission,
00:06:55.900 which sets sentencing policy.
00:06:57.700 So, okay, if you're saying it was one of the jobs you had
00:07:00.700 versus the other that it was relevant to,
00:07:02.380 then tell us how it was relevant to that job.
00:07:06.900 She completely dodged, refused to answer the question.
00:07:10.760 At which point, we had an interesting discussion
00:07:15.520 because Judge Jackson is on the board of trustees
00:07:19.140 of a private school here in Washington, D.C.
00:07:21.540 that's called Georgetown Day School.
00:07:23.900 And it is a wildly liberal school.
00:07:27.180 She is on the board of trustees,
00:07:28.720 and she had said in the school magazine,
00:07:32.020 and I read the quote at the hearing,
00:07:33.660 I don't have it in front of me,
00:07:34.480 but she said something to the effect of,
00:07:35.960 I love Georgetown Day School,
00:07:37.480 and I love their progressive policies
00:07:40.100 and commitment to social justice.
00:07:42.700 And she said, so I asked her, okay,
00:07:44.880 so you love that about the school,
00:07:46.560 you're on their board.
00:07:47.360 And by the way, Amy Coney Barrett was asked extensively
00:07:50.820 about being on the board of a private school.
00:07:54.280 So this was, the Democrats in the press
00:07:56.600 thought it was fair game when she was nominated.
00:08:00.820 And I asked her, what do you mean by social justice?
00:08:03.280 And she filibustered for a while about segregated schools,
00:08:08.500 and the school was founded to integrate
00:08:11.120 and not to discriminate.
00:08:13.020 And I was like, okay, look, that's great.
00:08:14.560 We all agree that discrimination is wrong.
00:08:17.100 I mean, we're all on the same page there.
00:08:20.720 But I asked her, I said,
00:08:22.600 is critical race theory taught in schools?
00:08:26.340 Is it taught in K through 12 schools?
00:08:28.040 You know, Democrats in the press have repeated ad nauseum,
00:08:31.280 it is taught nowhere.
00:08:32.320 My understanding is that critical race theory is,
00:08:37.680 it is an academic theory that is about the ways
00:08:42.920 in which race interacts with various institutions.
00:08:48.520 It doesn't come up in my work as a judge.
00:08:51.380 It's never something that I've studied or relied on,
00:08:54.980 and it wouldn't be something that I would rely on
00:08:57.860 if I was on the Supreme Court.
00:08:59.060 Well, the school she's on the board of teaches critical race theory 0.98
00:09:03.580 at every damn grade from pre-K all the way to 12th grade. 0.95
00:09:08.720 And so we spent quite a while walking through some of the specifics of that. 0.96
00:09:12.700 I'm also a little bit confused about her stance
00:09:14.660 because she's saying critical race theory is a really good thing,
00:09:18.280 and I don't know what it is, and it's not being taught anywhere.
00:09:20.980 I think it may have been in the same speech to the University of Michigan Law School,
00:09:25.340 may have been in other speeches.
00:09:26.680 She's expressed admiration for Derrick Bell,
00:09:29.580 who's one of the founders of critical race theory.
00:09:32.180 So this is, I think, exposing that she knows a thing or two about it.
00:09:37.100 If you know who Derrick Bell is, if you know who Kimberly Crenshaw is,
00:09:39.920 then you know something about the intellectual origins of it.
00:09:42.800 And even beyond that, she's expressed admiration for the 1619 Project
00:09:47.160 by Nicole Hannah-Jones, a completely made-up thesis
00:09:51.560 that the American Revolution was fought to defend the institution of slavery,
00:09:56.320 peddled in the New York Times.
00:09:57.360 Even the Times had to admit eventually that it was bogus.
00:10:00.540 This would be a sort of derivation of critical race theory.
00:10:03.800 So it seems to me like the evidence is there.
00:10:06.740 She knows what this is.
00:10:07.920 So is she a liar?
00:10:09.120 Well, I actually asked her exactly what you're saying.
00:10:12.000 I said, look, you gave another speech at a law school
00:10:14.480 where you were praising the 1619 Project and praising Nicole Hannah-Jones.
00:10:19.200 And the 1619 Project was revisionist history.
00:10:24.080 It is wildly dishonest.
00:10:25.680 It has been denounced by multiple respected historians,
00:10:29.940 so much so, as you noted, that the New York Times had to rescind the central thesis,
00:10:34.260 which was that a principal reason that the colonies fought the revolution
00:10:39.520 was to defend slavery.
00:10:40.840 That's nonsense. 1.00
00:10:41.780 It's garbage. 1.00
00:10:42.580 It's false. 1.00
00:10:43.820 I asked her if she agreed with that proposition.
00:10:46.040 She wouldn't answer.
00:10:47.060 I asked her if she was aware that it had been roundly condemned
00:10:49.860 and the New York Times had withdrawn it.
00:10:51.300 She said, nope, didn't know that.
00:10:53.020 So she just pleaded complete unawareness.
00:10:57.640 And on CRT, I actually had a number of the books
00:11:00.580 that are on either the required reading list or recommended reading list
00:11:03.920 at Georgetown Day School.
00:11:05.180 And so one of the books that I pulled out,
00:11:08.080 it really was quite a remarkable book.
00:11:09.680 It's a book called Anti-Racist Baby.
00:11:14.540 And this thing, and it's by Ibram Kendi,
00:11:17.580 who is one of the most vicious advocates of critical race theory.
00:11:26.220 He explains, I just actually, it's very short.
00:11:28.760 It starts off with Anti-Racist Baby is bred, not born.
00:11:32.200 Anti-Racist Baby is raised to make society transform.
00:11:36.280 And then I asked her about this.
00:11:37.740 Babies are taught to be racist or anti-racist.
00:11:41.200 There is no neutrality.
00:11:43.040 And at Georgetown Day School, this is taught in pre-K through second grade.
00:11:47.860 So four-year-olds through seven-year-olds.
00:11:50.300 And so I asked her, I said, look, do you think babies are racist?
00:11:54.020 She said, well, no, I don't think babies are racist, which is nice of her to say,
00:11:59.440 but she doesn't explain why she, why the school that she's on the board of that she praises
00:12:04.700 for their social justice progressive policies are teaching four-year-olds that babies are racist.
00:12:13.000 Now, I don't know if babies are racist or not.
00:12:15.760 I do know babies are sexist because my sweet little boy is very pro-mommy.
00:12:20.920 He's very anti-daddy.
00:12:22.400 I do consider this to be discrimination on the basis of my sex.
00:12:26.200 But this is the sort of stuff that, as you point out, it's not just that it's available.
00:12:30.240 This stuff is being assigned.
00:12:32.360 It is being encouraged for people to go read these, not merely Anti-Racist Baby,
00:12:38.580 but lots of these kind of texts from the youngest grades all the way to the highest grades.
00:12:43.080 But what the left has said here is, oh, Senator, you're just pulling out some crazy example.
00:12:49.060 How on earth is Judge Jackson supposed to know about the books that are being taught
00:12:53.840 in the schools that she's on the board of?
00:12:55.740 Well, another book that was there that I talked about is another one by Ibram Kendi
00:13:00.880 called Stamped for Kids.
00:13:04.740 And this thing, this is assigned to third graders, and it's really stunning.
00:13:10.140 I mean, it goes through, number one, it starts with a very humble proposition.
00:13:16.360 This is a quote.
00:13:17.820 This is not a book of my opinions.
00:13:20.000 This is a book about America and about you.
00:13:22.380 This book is full of truth.
00:13:23.760 It's packed with absolutely true facts of the choices people made over hundreds of years.
00:13:28.900 So it's not opinions, they say.
00:13:30.660 So what all does it say?
00:13:32.120 Well, there's one portion that I read in the hearing where it asks,
00:13:35.880 can we send white people back to Europe? 0.93
00:13:40.220 This is being taught to third graders.
00:13:44.380 It goes through and explains how, in Kendi's view, Thomas Jefferson was a racist. 0.81
00:13:53.300 Abraham Lincoln was a racist.
00:13:56.260 It goes on to explain W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the NAACP, was a racist. 0.94
00:14:03.880 Wow. 0.73
00:14:04.620 It goes on to explain that Booker T. Washington was a racist. 0.74
00:14:09.040 It goes on to explain that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were racists.
00:14:14.620 It goes on to explain, so the following movies are racist.
00:14:18.600 King Kong, Dumbo, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, The Cat in the Hat, many books by Dr. Seuss,
00:14:23.940 Swiss Family Robins, The Jungle Book, Little House on the Prairie, Curious George, Aladdin, and Pocahontas.
00:14:29.540 All of those are racist.
00:14:33.240 And let's see, what else does it say?
00:14:36.660 Well, here he says, and there were black people who rejected Du Bois's racist ideas.
00:14:41.560 That's W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the NAACP.
00:14:45.180 So I mean.
00:14:45.920 And W.E.B. Du Bois, by the way, is considered to be the more left wing of the early 20th century civil rights advocate.
00:14:53.960 Booker T. Washington, generally considered more conservative.
00:14:56.980 W.E.B. Du Bois, the lefties, until about five minutes ago, really exalted.
00:15:01.760 And now even he is too racist for them. 0.73
00:15:05.280 So he blasts both of them.
00:15:07.420 Another quote in Chapter 17.
00:15:09.580 Math, science, art. 0.86
00:15:10.880 Each has been used as a weapon against black people. 0.63
00:15:13.200 I asked Judge Jackson, what do you think about Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech, and in particular that he dreams of a nation where we can be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.
00:15:28.720 And she said at the outset she agreed with that.
00:15:31.180 Well, here's what this book says.
00:15:32.940 It says, the idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color.
00:15:43.760 It's called colorblindness.
00:15:46.280 Here's what's wrong with this. 0.99
00:15:47.800 It's ridiculous. 0.96
00:15:48.940 Skin color is something we all absolutely see. 0.86
00:15:52.400 So to pretend not to see color is pretty convenient if you don't actually want to stamp out racism to begin with.
00:15:59.660 And let me read you the last paragraph of the book.
00:16:02.400 You're going to be a little stunned.
00:16:03.560 I didn't read this at the hearing, so this is – I just ran out of time.
00:16:07.420 From the beginning, racist ideas have been stamped into the United States, into the Constitution, laws, policies, practices, and beliefs of segregationists and assimilationists.
00:16:23.100 And he calls assimilationists anyone who believes in integrations that white people and black people should work together.
00:16:29.000 They are assimilationists, they are assimilationists, which in his view are at almost as bad if not as bad. 0.93
00:16:34.020 Anti-racists continue their work in helping us become tied to anti-racist ideas and to use them to lift people up, turning potential into power.
00:16:48.180 And here are the last two sentences of the book.
00:16:49.780 People like Angela Davis and Patrice Cullors and perhaps like me and you.
00:16:59.880 So the book ends with a call for children to stand with two communists as the only way to defeat racism.
00:17:09.180 You know, the left's response to your pointing out all of these books, right?
00:17:15.200 It's not just one.
00:17:16.040 There are a lot of these books that are being peddled in these schools.
00:17:18.740 The left's response is, oh, come on, give me a break.
00:17:21.760 She's just on the board.
00:17:22.720 She doesn't read these books.
00:17:23.560 But the simple fact is, she has embraced and exalted and publicly admired the very ideologies that are expressed in all of these books.
00:17:35.220 Repeatedly, not only that, her college roommate, Professor Fairfax, who introduced her yesterday, so came to the Judiciary Committee to introduce her.
00:17:45.720 She's the chairman of the board of the trustees of this school.
00:17:48.320 So she and her college roommate are both on the board together.
00:17:52.720 And look, afterwards, I had a lot of reporters rushing up and saying, why is this relevant?
00:17:58.940 How dare you ask about this?
00:18:01.240 And I made clear, listen, we're not going to in this confirmation process.
00:18:05.220 We're not going to go into the gutter.
00:18:06.640 We're not going to engage in the kind of political circus that Democrats did with Brett Kavanaugh.
00:18:11.340 We're not going to slander her character personally.
00:18:15.200 But we have a responsibility to examine her actual record and what her views are, as the record demonstrates, insofar as it is relevant to the job she would do as a Supreme Court justice.
00:18:27.360 And if Judge Jackson believes in the vicious racist divisiveness of critical race theory, that, I believe, would be a serious impediment to carrying out the responsibility of a Supreme Court justice.
00:18:44.100 Because it is the opposite of a colorblind constitution.
00:18:47.440 It is an explicitly racial divide constitution that embraces racial discrimination.
00:18:54.580 That's right at the heart of CRT is that we have to discriminate.
00:18:59.900 And she didn't want to answer any of those questions.
00:19:02.460 Well, it's actually much more relevant than any of the attacks on Brett Kavanaugh.
00:19:07.520 You know, the Democrats, as you pointed out, I think, quite well during these hearings, the Democrats dragged a bunch of people who were not credible before the Senate, including a man who's now a felon.
00:19:19.340 Michael Avenatti was representing.
00:19:21.500 No, no, CNN told me he was going to be a Democratic presidential frontrunner.
00:19:25.420 Yes, the former future president, Michael Avenatti.
00:19:28.660 He was representing this woman who had never met Brett Kavanaugh.
00:19:31.980 There was no evidence of any of the allegations against him.
00:19:35.360 But the allegations all basically amounted to he groped me.
00:19:38.980 He was creepy with me.
00:19:40.100 We were at a party and he drank too many beers.
00:19:42.180 The allegations here are this woman believes the Constitution is fundamentally broken, flawed, unjust. 0.99
00:19:50.140 This is an evil country founded on upholding white supremacy and attacking black people. 0.97
00:19:56.140 That is much more relevant and much more radical when we're talking about someone who's going to be interpreting the Constitution on the Supreme Court bench. 0.99
00:20:03.720 Well, that's right.
00:20:04.900 And the basis for my questioning was based on her public speeches and her public record, which she has advocated, praising the 1619 Project, celebrating CRT, saying it is part of what one does in sentencing.
00:20:17.180 And the second half of my question got very into sentencing, and I got to tell you that Judge Jackson has a troubling pattern that extends for three decades of advocating for lighter and more lenient sentences for sex offenders, for those who commit violent sexual crimes, for those who sexually assault children, and for those who possess child porn.
00:20:43.720 And when she was in law school, her law review note, so when you're on the law review, you write a note, which is sort of your big academic piece that you publish.
00:20:54.020 Her law review note was examining the laws the states have passed to deal with sexual predators.
00:21:00.700 And she examined, number one, sex predator registries, which all 50 states require.
00:21:06.000 If you're convicted of a sexual offense, you have to register.
00:21:08.080 She examined DNA databases, which many states require that if you have a sex offense, you put your DNA in, so if there's a subsequent crime, you can be caught.
00:21:19.080 She examined public notification statutes, which say if a sexual predator move into your neighborhood, you have a right to be notified.
00:21:26.400 And then she examined civil commitment statutes, that is for people who are sexually violent predators, who have behavioral abnormalities, who have a psychological condition.
00:21:38.020 Many of the states have civil commitment for them after their sentence is over.
00:21:42.740 And her note, and this is a little academic and a little wonky, but I tried to walk through it in my questioning.
00:21:50.400 There are two ways the courts have analyzed these types of laws as either punitive or regulatory.
00:21:57.640 And the sort of short answer is if they're regulatory, they're permissible.
00:22:02.760 And if they're punitive, they're unconstitutional.
00:22:04.960 So the divide is really consequential.
00:22:08.200 Her note argues that they should all be viewed based on their effects, and most, if not all of them, are punitive and therefore unconstitutional.
00:22:18.420 Now, she says it in some legal gobbledygook, but that's what she argues.
00:22:23.740 And so I walked her through that, and she insists that's not what she argued.
00:22:28.420 But I'll tell you, Michael, I've got some experience in this because Texas has a law, the Texas Sexually Violent Predator Civil Commitment Law,
00:22:37.680 that a Texas Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi struck down as unconstitutional.
00:22:43.440 And the reason it did so is it concluded, just like Judge Jackson's note suggests, although it didn't cite her note,
00:22:50.140 but it concluded that the statute was punitive and therefore it was unconstitutional.
00:22:54.000 And I was the Solicitor General of Texas, so I argued the appeal myself in the Texas Supreme Court and ended up winning unanimously.
00:23:02.420 It was a case called Enri Fisher, where the Texas Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Court of Appeals and upheld the statute.
00:23:09.800 And so I feel very strongly about the importance of protecting people and particularly children from sexually violent predators.
00:23:18.400 And it wasn't just her law school note.
00:23:20.980 She has a consistent pattern going forward to today of advocating leniency for sexual predators. 0.92
00:23:28.860 So what is the explanation of this?
00:23:33.300 What is the argument here?
00:23:35.000 I mean, to steel man her side of it, assuming she's not a pedophile or something,
00:23:40.100 what is her take on the law that would defend this?
00:23:44.120 I mean, it seems so abhorrent to pretty much anybody.
00:23:47.160 So, look, I think there are some people of the left that reflexively defend criminal defendants and defend criminals.
00:23:55.080 And that's just how they're oriented.
00:23:56.820 You see them defending murderers, defending rapists.
00:23:59.340 And that's just, you know, she came out of law school.
00:24:01.680 She clerked.
00:24:02.180 She clerked for Justice Breyer.
00:24:03.500 But then she became a public defender.
00:24:05.000 And so her job was to defend criminals every day.
00:24:07.720 And, you know, what, at least with sex offenders, I mean, she writes in her law school note about how there's so much vindictiveness.
00:24:17.380 People want to punish sex offenders.
00:24:19.300 And she says it's our job to take the side of the sex offenders.
00:24:23.840 That's what she writes in law school. 0.99
00:24:25.900 Fast forward to her being vice chairman of the Sentencing Commission.
00:24:28.860 And she has this hearing where she raises, she's asking a witness. 0.97
00:24:36.560 She says, well, are there people who have child pornography who are not pedophiles, who are not sexually aroused by child porn? 0.88
00:24:45.580 They're just collectors.
00:24:46.520 You know, like you might collect art or stamps, like, like, are they collectors or maybe they like technology and they're just into computers.
00:24:56.020 Now, look, you may like computers, but but kiddie porn, like it is a bizarre question.
00:25:02.760 And the White House's talking point that they put out is, well, people are cherry picking what she said.
00:25:09.760 So I put up a chart with the entire quote and I read the entire quote of what she said.
00:25:13.920 And her response was, well, I was just asking a question.
00:25:19.140 Yeah, you were asking if people with kiddie porn are not into kiddie porn, like it's a like it's a weird question.
00:25:27.860 And then you look at her sentencing.
00:25:30.680 So I put up a chart at the hearing of the child porn cases she's had. 0.77
00:25:38.920 And there have been a couple where she had no discretion in sentencing.
00:25:42.620 Either there was a mandatory minimum that she had to sentence or there was a plea agreement that both the prosecution and defense agreed to.
00:25:50.220 And so she implemented it.
00:25:51.680 So if you look at the cases where.
00:25:56.120 She had discretion and where the prosecution made a recommendation.
00:26:00.440 Every single one, she sentenced the defendant to way, way, way below the sentencing guidelines and way, way, way below what the prosecutor asked for.
00:26:12.280 So I walk through United States versus Chazin. 0.99
00:26:17.560 The sentencing guidelines were 78 to 97 months.
00:26:21.600 The prosecutor asked for 78 to 97 months.
00:26:25.620 She sentenced Chazin to 28 months.
00:26:28.200 So that's 64 percent less than the prosecutor asked for.
00:26:31.440 United States versus Cooper.
00:26:34.440 Sentencing guidelines was 151 to 188 months.
00:26:38.440 That's 15 years.
00:26:40.620 Prosecutor asked for 72 months, so substantially less.
00:26:43.280 She sentenced him to 60 months, but that was the mandatory minimum.
00:26:47.140 She didn't have discretion.
00:26:47.980 That was a 16 percent, 17 percent reduction.
00:26:51.620 United States versus Downs.
00:26:54.100 Prosecutor asked for 70 months.
00:26:55.560 She sentenced to 60.
00:26:56.660 That was the mandatory minimum.
00:26:57.840 She couldn't go below 60.
00:26:59.040 That was a 14 percent reduction.
00:27:01.620 United States versus Hawkins.
00:27:03.300 Prosecutor asked for 49 months.
00:27:05.480 Sorry, United States versus Savage.
00:27:07.020 Prosecutor asked for 49 months.
00:27:09.080 She sentenced him to 37 months.
00:27:10.800 That was a 24 percent reduction.
00:27:13.280 United States versus Stewart.
00:27:15.940 Prosecutor asked for 97 months.
00:27:17.760 She sentenced him to 57 months.
00:27:19.640 And then United States versus Hawkins.
00:27:21.400 I want to pause on this one.
00:27:24.200 The guidelines were 97 to 121 months.
00:27:29.780 So that's 10 years.
00:27:30.700 This was an 18 year old, 18 year old kid.
00:27:35.080 It was a young adult who had multiple graphic videos of child pornography with children as young as eight years old.
00:27:44.400 Children eight, children 10, children 11 engaged in sexual acts with adults and engaged in sexual acts with each other. 0.87
00:27:51.560 In one instance, being violently raped. 0.93
00:27:54.940 So these are videos of children, young children being violently raped.
00:28:00.260 The guidelines said 97 to 121 months, 10 years.
00:28:04.480 The prosecutor asked for 24 months.
00:28:08.400 She sentenced him to three months.
00:28:13.240 Three months for having multiple videos of children, young children as young as eight engaged in explicit graphic sexual acts.
00:28:26.360 And at the hearing today, we asked her about it and she had she just responded with platitude. 0.92
00:28:34.700 She said, well, well, child pornography is horrible and it's terrible and I despise it. 0.72
00:28:38.640 And she said, I'm a mom. 0.81
00:28:39.420 I love my kids.
00:28:40.440 I don't doubt she loves her kids.
00:28:43.380 But and at the sentencing hearing, she said, well, this 18 year old, he was young and he's not a pedophile.
00:28:53.060 She apparently determined he's not a pedophile.
00:28:55.120 He just had videos of children engaged in explicit sexual acts and young children, too.
00:29:02.080 We're not it's not as though he's 18 and it's videos of a 16 year old.
00:29:06.080 Right. It's 18 videos of an eight year old and her.
00:29:09.920 She said at the sentencing hearing, well, he was curious and these were his peers near his age.
00:29:17.360 And so the point you said we asked her, I said, look, he was 18.
00:29:20.660 An 18 year old is not a peer to an eight year old.
00:29:25.240 Yeah. And and I'm sorry if you are in possession of multiple videos of young children being violated.
00:29:33.340 She may say he's not a pedophile.
00:29:35.980 But but in my book, look, this is not a victimless crime. 0.99
00:29:39.880 You can get three months for a damn speeding ticket. 0.99
00:29:42.620 Yeah. And yet in this case, and the problem is child porn, because there's a market for it. 0.99
00:29:49.940 It means that children are violated.
00:29:52.680 These were kids. This was not virtual porn.
00:29:55.020 This was not fake.
00:29:56.000 These were real children who were horribly violated.
00:29:59.960 And at the sentencing hearing, she apologized to the criminal defendant and said, I'm sorry this happened to you.
00:30:06.440 And it is is stunning.
00:30:09.600 I don't know how to explain it.
00:30:11.600 She keeps getting indignant and saying these are heinous, egregious crimes.
00:30:16.240 But then she won't explain.
00:30:19.540 Why she provides such light sentences.
00:30:21.820 And even to this point of I'm so sorry this is happening to you, there are people, there are plenty of people who argue this is a victimless crime.
00:30:30.580 If the if the person who's consuming it is not actively producing the pornography, then, you know, it's just another digital image.
00:30:38.860 It's just zeros and ones.
00:30:40.220 But as you just alluded to, Senator.
00:30:43.080 The point is, there's a market for this.
00:30:45.320 And so if you are feeding the demand for child pornography, then you are incentivizing the producers to, in some cases, kidnap, to violate children.
00:30:55.260 You are participating in that.
00:30:57.600 Now, that's exactly right.
00:30:59.400 And, you know, it's interesting.
00:31:01.420 The Democrats are bending over backwards.
00:31:03.060 They're engaged in incredible gymnastics trying to defend it.
00:31:05.640 When these concerns initially became public a few days ago, the White House responded hysterically.
00:31:12.700 A bunch of the corporate media outlets fact-checked it and said it's all wrong.
00:31:16.940 And their justification is they said, number one, the quote from the sentencing commission is cherry-picked.
00:31:22.700 That's why I provided the entire quote.
00:31:24.580 Said, all right, you take the whole of what she said.
00:31:26.860 I think it's on its face absurd.
00:31:28.160 But secondly, this is their talking point.
00:31:32.460 They say the guidelines are too high, and there are many federal judges across the country who depart downward from the guidelines.
00:31:41.060 So what I did in my questioning is I didn't focus on the guidelines.
00:31:45.540 I focused on what did the prosecutor ask for.
00:31:48.900 And this is in D.C. where you've got liberal prosecutors.
00:31:51.020 And her defense is, well, in sentencing, I have to apply all the factors and balance them, and I'm just following the law.
00:32:00.840 Well, if that were the case, presumably there would be some cases where she would sentence the defendant to more than the prosecutor asked, 0.95
00:32:06.900 some cases where she'd sentence him to less, some cases where she'd sentence him to the same.
00:32:10.340 In 100% of the cases where she had discretion, she sentences him to less, on average, 48% less than the prosecutor asked for.
00:32:21.840 And that is a clear, demonstrable pattern that is consistent with what she's been advocating for for 30 years.
00:32:30.080 Okay, so I've got two questions then that come from this.
00:32:32.540 One, on the scope of radicalism, qualifications, threat to the Constitution and the Republic, compared to other Supreme Court nominees from Democrats, where does Judge Jackson rank?
00:32:45.940 And two, do you think that these concerns that you raised today that seem to be really significant concerns, will they affect the nomination?
00:32:55.940 So, I think on the question of criminal law, it is likely that if she's confirmed, Judge Jackson will be the furthest to the left of any of the nine justices.
00:33:06.280 In other words, the most likely to strike down the death penalty, the most likely to vote to release criminals.
00:33:14.420 And, you know, one of the cases that I talked about is a case that came out of Kansas, where the Supreme Court upheld Kansas' sexually violent predator civil commitment law.
00:33:23.140 That was a 5-4 decision.
00:33:24.760 And so, you have to assume she would vote consistent with what she's advocated for, which, if she were able to get four other justices to agree with her, would result in thousands of sexually violent predators who are currently in civil commitment being released.
00:33:40.720 And it could potentially result in striking down DNA databases, in striking down sex registries.
00:33:47.480 I mean, the consequences are breathtaking.
00:33:50.220 And I'll tell you one indication of how concerned Democrats are about this.
00:33:58.400 So, most of their questioning has been trying to rebut or pre-but these.
00:34:04.100 So, among other things, they focused on other cases.
00:34:06.560 So, there are cases where someone actually sexually assaulted a child where she did impose tough sentences.
00:34:12.500 So, they focus on those.
00:34:14.420 And, okay, fine.
00:34:15.420 Look, I mean, that's good.
00:34:16.800 But child porn cases where there's not the direct assault of a child by the defendant, she has a very clear pattern here.
00:34:25.100 But this evening, Maisie Hirono, who's a very liberal Democrat from Hawaii, she was talking about these cases.
00:34:36.840 She was trying to rehabilitate Judge Jackson.
00:34:39.220 And she says, you know, well, in five of the cases, if you look at the probation report, what she did was consistent with the probation report.
00:34:47.900 Now, I'm sitting there listening to this questioning.
00:34:50.680 And at the end of Maisie's questioning, I ask of the chairman of the committee, Dick Durbin, I said, Chairman Durbin, Senator Hirono, just referred to the probation reports.
00:35:03.020 There are no probation reports in this record.
00:35:06.400 We've looked.
00:35:07.260 They're not there.
00:35:08.100 I haven't seen them.
00:35:09.920 My staff hasn't seen them.
00:35:11.460 We are highly interested in seeing what the probation reports say.
00:35:16.080 They're not in the record.
00:35:17.560 Senator Hirono said she's seen five of them.
00:35:19.680 So, my question to you is, do the Democrats have access to evidence in this confirmation that Republicans don't?
00:35:29.740 Is the Biden White House giving aspects of Judge Jackson's judicial record only to Democrats and not to Republicans?
00:35:39.500 So, Durbin said, I don't know.
00:35:43.120 No, I'm sure not.
00:35:44.420 I don't know.
00:35:44.980 And gaveled the hearing shot.
00:35:46.380 Senator Hirono, ixnay on the probation reports, pray.
00:35:49.860 Right.
00:35:50.080 Look, she, I think, didn't realize she was letting us know she had them.
00:35:55.300 And it just happened I was paying attention to what she said. 0.99
00:35:58.420 So, Durbin's like, no, no, no, shut up, shut up, shut up. 0.99
00:36:01.260 We took a 20-minute break. 0.99
00:36:03.080 When we walked back, so as we're walking in, Durbin gives us this piece of paper.
00:36:09.340 Now, this piece of paper, you can't see it, but that's okay.
00:36:12.460 It's a chart, and it's a chart that lists what all the probation offices recommended in each of these cases.
00:36:19.340 And he hands it to each of the Republicans as he walked in, or his staff does.
00:36:23.360 And so, Durbin and I had an exchange as soon as the hearing gaveled back in.
00:36:26.980 I said, Chairman Durbin, your staff just handed us a piece of paper.
00:36:30.560 However, this piece of paper is not in the record.
00:36:33.860 It has never been put before the Judiciary Committee.
00:36:36.340 Your staff handed it to us.
00:36:38.520 Your staff told us the Biden White House gave it to you earlier today.
00:36:47.900 Why is it that Republicans are just getting it now?
00:36:52.340 And what else do Democrats have for the Biden White House about Judge Jackson's record that Republicans don't have access to?
00:36:59.640 And I said, and Chairman Durbin, let me ask you, if the shoe were on the other foot, if this were, say, Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing,
00:37:07.580 how would you have reacted if the Trump White House had given elements of Judge Kavanaugh's judicial record to Republicans and not to Democrats?
00:37:16.000 You would have lost your mind, and you would have been right to do so.
00:37:21.060 Durbin said, well, we got it earlier today, and it was available to everyone.
00:37:26.860 You just had to ask for it, at which point John Kennedy jumps in and says, now, wait a second.
00:37:33.940 Are we supposed to be clairvoyant?
00:37:36.620 How are we supposed to know to ask for it?
00:37:40.240 And he said, well, if you'd only asked for it, you would get it.
00:37:42.640 And so I asked him directly, is there anything else the Democrats have been given by the White House that Republicans have not?
00:37:51.520 He said, not that I know of, which is a heck of a non-answer.
00:37:55.680 And I'll tell you how I ended it.
00:37:57.300 I said, well, in each of these cases, there's what's called a PSR.
00:38:01.140 It's a pre-sentence report.
00:38:02.360 It's a detailed report on the defendant.
00:38:05.040 We don't have the PSRs, the pre-sentence reports.
00:38:07.420 I said, we should get them because Judge Jackson, in defending her pattern of light sentences, said, well, I was following the recommendations of probation.
00:38:16.980 We need to see what those pre-sentence reports are.
00:38:19.860 I said, for example, the Hawkins case, the one we talked about a minute ago, I just found out that the pre-sentence report recommended 18 months, and she sentenced him to three.
00:38:30.040 So that was dramatically lower.
00:38:34.480 We need to read, this is centrally an issue, and I said, you know, Mr. Chairman, if these pre-sentence reports were good for Judge Jackson, if they exonerated her, you'd have made them public already.
00:38:46.340 The fact that you don't want us to see them, that leads to a very strong inference.
00:38:51.040 As of now, we don't have the pre-sentence reports because I don't think they want the American people to know what's in them.
00:38:56.060 So what you're saying is, Judge Jackson, we don't know what she did at some parties at Georgetown Prep in the 80s with PJ and Squee.
00:39:05.400 You know, there are no personal real questions here, no questions about her credentials.
00:39:09.900 She even went to that school, I can't even name it, up in Cambridge that you went to.
00:39:14.540 But she has a record of radicalism, and now we know the Democrats have a record of covering up that radicalism in the confirmation hearings. 0.54
00:39:24.340 Well, they certainly don't want anyone focused on the facts, and they're doing all they can to try to distract people.
00:39:31.660 I got to say, watching her explain why with these people with child pornography, she gives them a slap on the wrist, to me, it was very concerning.
00:39:44.400 And we have not heard remotely a sufficient answer to it.
00:39:47.840 All right, well, that doesn't make me feel great about the future of the Supreme Court, but I am glad at least that the truth is starting to come to light.
00:39:55.540 We're running late as usual, but before I let you go, we've got to get to at least a couple of mailbag questions.
00:40:01.280 There's a question on tactics from Count de Monet who says, why don't Republicans fight as dirty as the Democrats?
00:40:08.640 They already call us every bad name in the book anyways, so why not?
00:40:13.360 Look, it's a good question, and I don't think fighting dirty is the right way to go.
00:40:18.000 So let's take Brett Kavanaugh, for example. 0.96
00:40:20.380 I mean, they went nasty with personal aspersions, with claims that were obviously bogus, that were ridiculous. 0.65
00:40:28.640 That's not the right thing to do.
00:40:30.080 I think we ought to behave with integrity, but I think we ought to fight hard.
00:40:33.880 So I agree with most of the premise of the question, which is we ought to fight as hard as the Democrats, but just not nasty.
00:40:41.280 We ought to fight on substance.
00:40:42.540 All the questions I had for Judge Jackson were about her record, her beliefs, her substantive suitability to be a Supreme Court justice.
00:40:52.240 And look, the underlying sentiment, Democrats fight tooth and nail.
00:40:57.260 They crawl through broken glass with a marine dagger in their teeth.
00:41:00.980 Republicans treat a lot of these fights like we're playing croquet in the backyard, and we need to actually behave like we believe what we're saying, and a lot of times Republicans don't do that.
00:41:12.980 Right.
00:41:13.120 We don't want to do immoral things.
00:41:15.180 We don't stand for injustice, so we don't want to do that.
00:41:18.360 But frankly, I think the line of attack on Judge Jackson, where you're actually going after her record, to me, is much more persuasive than anything they ever thought they had on the summer of 82 with Brett Kavanaugh.
00:41:31.320 A final question, Senator.
00:41:33.440 Perhaps the most profound one we've had in weeks.
00:41:35.760 This is from David.
00:41:37.400 Does the passage of time feel like the passage of time where the passage of time is significant and a passage?
00:41:44.400 All right.
00:41:47.500 I'm going to have to punt to our resident Yaley because I'll confess I don't understand the question, and I'm quite certain that seems very navel-gazing.
00:41:56.080 So, Michael, how do you answer that question?
00:41:59.760 Well, Senator, clearly you have not been studying up on your Kamala Harris.
00:42:05.120 I think it speaks to your intellect and character that you were not able to answer that question.
00:42:10.340 But I, having recently listened to the speech from our esteemed vice president, I know exactly what he's talking about, and I have no idea what she's talking about, as I usually don't.
00:42:20.660 So I guess we'll have to punt it to her.
00:42:22.720 So my follow-up question that's intimately related is how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
00:42:29.040 More coherent than the vice president, actually, Senator.
00:42:32.060 So you will be in these confirmation hearings.
00:42:34.200 We look forward to hearing much more about it.
00:42:36.640 In the meantime, though, you will be on The Cloak Room, the series for Verdict Plus members, with our friend Liz Wheeler.
00:42:44.060 Liz, what are you going to be talking about?
00:42:45.400 Hi, Michael.
00:42:46.080 Hi, Senator.
00:42:46.780 I have to admit, standing here in the wings while you guys were talking, I did chuckle when you said how much wood would chuck chuck.
00:42:52.980 We have a good topic to talk about tonight.
00:42:54.920 We are going to talk about the Babylon Bee.
00:42:56.460 The Babylon Bee was suspended by Twitter this week for a tweet about the transgender individual that serves in the Biden administration, Rachel Levine.
00:43:04.560 This is a satirical website.
00:43:06.600 This is a comedy group, and they were kicked off of Twitter for making a joke about a transgender individual.
00:43:11.640 We're also going to talk about Leah Thomas, the transgender who, born a biological male, competing in the women's category, won the NCAA championship.
00:43:19.440 We're going to talk about the cultural implications of this and what can be done at a policy level to protect women, to protect women's sports.
00:43:26.380 It's going to be great.
00:43:28.020 You can join us at verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus.
00:43:32.780 That's verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus.
00:43:35.420 If you use my promo code cloakroom, then you get your first month free on your annual subscription.
00:43:40.040 That is verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus.
00:43:43.100 I can't wait.
00:43:44.020 I can't wait to see it.
00:43:44.920 That's all for me, though.
00:43:45.700 So in the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
00:43:47.520 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:43:48.740 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country.
00:44:09.660 In 2022, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.
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