Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy condemned confirmed Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson in a National Review op-ed late Monday for her silence on the pro-abortion protests held at justices’ homes.
In a Monday interview with The Washington Post, the interviewer asked Jackson for her opinion about the recent pro-abortion protests held outside the conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes, to which she said, “I don’t have any comment.” The soon-to-be justice expressed her shock about the draft majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade being leaked to the public.
In his op-ed, McCarthy described her silence on the protests as “somewhere between cowardly and sinister,” calling on the progressive justices to condemn the leak of the draft opinion and any illegal action taken by pro-abortion activists.
“This ranges from somewhere between cowardly and sinister, much like the failure of the justices to issue a joint statement that echoes the chief justice’s condemnation of the leak and statement of determination to identify the leaker, and that condemns the protests, which violate federal law,” he wrote. (RELATED: ‘I’m Not A Biologist’: Judge Jackson Declines To Answer Whether A 20-Week-Old Unborn Child Can Live Outside The Womb)
Judge Jackson Won’t Say Dobbs Leak Is Wrong and Won’t Object to Protests at Her Soon-to-Be Colleagues’… https://t.co/yDCzQhYbKK
— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) May 17, 2022
A federal statute, 18 USC § 1507, outlaws private citizens from attempting to influence a court decision by organizing “pickets or parades near or in a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such a judge, juror, witness or court officer.” During a May 9 press conference, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration does not advocate for peaceful protesters to break the law.
McCarthy criticized Jackson for refusing to weigh in on whether the leak was a “good thing or bad thing” after saying she had been “shocked” by the leak, then accused her and other progressives of indulging “scare tactics” against the Court.
“But they are AWOL and thus, like the Biden administration, tacitly approving of, or at least indulgent of, the scare tactics against the Court and its members,” he said. “Or maybe they figure, not irrationally, that if they said the right things, they’d have the ‘peaceful protesters’ on their front lawns next.”
“But that is not what she did. She first expressed shock over the leak, so it was clearly a topic she was willing to weigh in on. But then she refused to say whether she thought the leak — which the chief justice and Justice Clarence Thomas (the senior justice on the Court) have full-throatedly condemned — was a good or bad thing,” he continued.
Left-wing group Ruth Sent Us published the addresses of the six conservative justices in early May in response to the leaked majority opinion draft. Protesters have arrived in front of some of the justices’ homes, with some wearing “The Handmaid’s Tale” costumes and others chanting “if abortion rights come under attack, we will fight back” behind a “reproductive rights for all” banner.