(Headline USA) Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is refusing to make public a number of records related to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing in a number of child pornography cases.
Republicans have asked Durbin to release the reports, written by probation officers after interviewing defendants involved in Jackson’s cases. But because they are under seal, Durbin claimed that releasing the records would be a “bridge too far for this committee.”
“We spent a lot of time here reflecting on these terrible crimes,” Durbin said.
“Everyone has acknowledged how terrible they are, and how damaging they can be to the victims of crime, story after story, and I don’t question a single word that was spoken separately for the same victims,” he said.
“I would not want it weighing on my conscience that we are turning over these pre-sentence reports to this committee for the first time in history and that information out of this, because it was released, would somehow compromise or endanger any victim as a result of it,” he added.
Durbin went on to chastise Republicans who requested the records, saying “we ought to think long and hard about whether or not we even consider going into pre-sentence reports.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, however, pointed out that Jackson herself told the senators that the pre-sentencing reports were “relevant to understanding those cases.”
Still, Durbin refused.
“I do not want it weighing on my conscience that I gave the green light to release this information, so that it might endanger the lives of innocent victims,” he said. “I’m sorry, that’s a bridge too far for me.”
In response, Senate Republicans blasted Democrats for withholding information that is relevant to their line of questioning.
“I’ve asked for non-public records related to the judge’s tenure on the [U.S.] Sentencing Commission,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, argued. “Those have not been produced, just like 48,000 pages of records withheld by the White House.
“How is the United States Senate supposed to review a record that we don’t have?” he said. “This process might be timely, but it’s neither thorough nor fair to the American public, and I hope we can rectify that.”
