QAnon Cheers Republican Attacks on Jackson. Democrats See a Signal.

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.