Ted Cruz: More Republicans Were Considering Voting for KBJ Confirmation than Did

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed that more Senate Republicans would have voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court than did if her sentencing history had not been brought to light.

Cruz, speaking on the most recent episode of his Verdict podcast, said that besides the three Republican senators — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitt Romney (R-UT) — who voted for Jackson, more would have voted for her if her sentencing history was not exposed.

“I think we easily could have seen five or ten Republicans vote for her, and I think the work that a handful of us did on the Senate Judiciary Committee laying out her record,” he acknowledged. “Cause several of the people who would have been wobbling who would have wanted to vote for because they would have wanted to get the praise for the press.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questions U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, March 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

He explained that during the Senate Republican lunches, there were “vigorous conversations” about Jackson. And during the lunches, some Republicans expressed interest in comparing Jackson’s sentences to other judges since “others depart below the sentencing guidelines.”

“I went back and did that research and the chart… I did in response to questions from fellow Republican senators,” he further explained. “And I’m not surprised at the outcomes because I read the transcripts of our sentencing,” acknowledging that “her record was so extreme.”

Cruz said he worked to create charts that compared her record with sentencing guidelines in addition to making copies of “key portions of the [sentencing] transcripts” to pass around to other Republican senators.

Breitbart News previously obtained the charts Cruz used during his questioning in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which showed that “Jackson sentenced those in possession of child pornography to nearly 60 percent less time than the national average.”

The charts that Cruz used also showed that “cases of child porn distribution in which Jackson was the presiding judge were sentenced 47 percent less than the national average” and that she also “sentenced the production of child porn 35 percent less than the national average.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.

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