Republicans say the White House did not include in materials given to the Judiciary Committee a grisly child porn case in which Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson departed significantly below probation office recommendation – and are raising questions of whether the White House “intentionally left it out,” which the White House disputes.
Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, sentenced the case less than a year ago as she was about to be elevated to the D.C. Circuit Court. Titled U.S. v. Cane, it involved “over 6,500 files depicting children appearing to be of elementary, middle and high school ages, engaged in sexual acts or posing sexually.” The probation office recommended a sentence of 84 months in the case but Jackson sentenced the man to 60 months in prison, which was the mandatory minimum.
“Not only does this case, which Judge Jackson left off her list of child abuse cases, undercut her argument that she followed the probation office’s recommended sentences, but it also underscores the perils of moving too quickly in the vetting process,” a Republican Judiciary Committee aide told Fox News.
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“This is a cover-up by the Biden White House and Senate Democrats,” conservative Article III Project founder Mike Davis told Fox News. “They’re covering up her record. They intentionally omitted this case from less than a year ago because it did not fit their political narrative.”
In the sentencing hearing transcript for the Cane case, Jackson disregards some images and videos relied upon by the probation office to make its recommendation because the statement Cane agreed to when he plead guilty did not include that evidence.
Jackson did this despite the fact that the probation officer at the sentencing hearing urged her to take those “sadistic and masochistic” videos and photos into account in her final sentence. She had authority to do so even if they weren’t included in the “statement of offense,” the probation officer said.
Jackson also cited “policy disagreements with the guidelines concerning the offense level enhancements for use of computer and number of images.”
“[A] computer is at work with respect to nearly all distribution offenses today, and it is typically very easy to receive and possess and distribute child pornography electronically such that the mere number of images and the fact that you used an electronic medium are not ordinarily in themselves indicative of an especially heinous or egregious offense,” Jackson said.
During the hearing Jackson also acknowledged some evaluations did not show Cane was fully reformed. And she emphasized the harm child pornography causes to its victims, describing Cane’s crime as “heinous.”
As she handed down the 60-month sentence, Jackson also acknowledged letters of support from Cane’s friends about his “true character,” and steps the man took “in prison to try to rehabilitate yourself.”
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