https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/qanon-cheers-republican-attacks-on-jackson-democrats-see-a-signal/ar-AAVqKO7?ocid=msedgntp
The New York Times
QAnon Cheers Republican Attacks on Jackson. Democrats See a Signal.
David D. Kirkpatrick and Stuart A. Thompson - 56m ago
The online world of adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory sprang into action almost as soon as Senator Josh Hawley tweeted his alarm: that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Biden administration’s Supreme Court nominee, had handed down sentences below the minimum recommended in federal guidelines for possessing images of child sexual abuse.
“An apologist for child molesters,” the QAnon supporter Zak Paine declared in a video the next day, on March 17, asserting without evidence that Democrats were repeatedly “elevating pedophiles and people who can change the laws surrounding punishment” for pedophiles.
By Wednesday, as Judge Jackson appeared for the third day before the Senate Judiciary Committee, claims that she was lenient toward people charged with possessing the illegal imagery had emerged as a recurring theme in her questioning by Republicans.
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“Every judge who does what you are doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, picking up the line of attack.
Never mind that those sentences did not come up at Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearing last year to a federal appeals court, that other judicial nominees have faced no questions about similar sentencing decisions, or that a former federal prosecutor called the allegations “meritless to the point of demagoguery” in the conservative National Review.
The line of attack has set off a new debate over the Republican Party’s stance toward QAnon. A White House spokesman this week accused Mr. Hawley of pandering to the conspiracy theory’s believers among his party’s rank and file, calling his comments an “embarrassing QAnon-signaling smear.” Conservatives, in return, blasted the Biden administration for invoking the specter of QAnon for its own political agenda, to fire up the Democratic base without addressing the questions.
“Conspiracy theorists did not travel back in time to make the nominee write her law review note about whether certain criminals are punished too harshly or make Judge Jackson hand out such lenient sentences,” a spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, wrote in an email.
“Left Invokes QAnon After Josh Hawley Exposes Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Soft Record on Child Sex Offenders,” declared a headline on the right-wing website Breitbart that was widely shared this week in QAnon circles.
A spokesman for Senator Hawley declined to comment on his motivations.
Although few QAnon followers appeared to take notice of Judge Jackson’s sentencing record before Senator Hawley’s tweets, her judicial career had touched the roots of the conspiracy theory: an earlier internet myth known as Pizzagate.
That debunked theory held that Satan-worshiping Democrats were trafficking children out of the basement of a Washington restaurant, and in 2017 a believer armed with an assault rifle stormed in and fired his weapon. Judge Jackson, as a district court judge, sentenced him to four years in prison, saying his actions “left psychological wreckage.”
The QAnon conspiracy theory was born a few months later when an anonymous writer — often signing as Q — elaborated on the discredited myth that a cabal of top Democrats was abusing children. Q purported to be a top official close to President Donald J. Trump and asserted that the president was waging a secret war against the cabal.
Slogans about protecting the children became catchphrases that QAnon adherents used to identify one another, and their bizarre fantasy — initially encouraged by far-right news outlets, then promoted by a ring of social media influencers — appeared to spread widely among Trump supporters. At least two Republican lawmakers elected in 2020 had made statements supportive of QAnon, and prosecutors say that many people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol subscribed to the theory.
Among those now echoing the Republican allegations about the judicial nominee, in fact, is Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have played a major role in writing the anonymous Q posts. Mr. Watkins, who has denied any part in the Q messages, is running for the Republican nomination to an Arizona congressional seat, largely on the strength of his QAnon association; this week, he qualified for the ballot.
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