WATCH: Marsha Blackburn Says Ketanji Brown Jackson Must Explain Release of Violent Criminals During COVID

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) addressed the opening day of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Monday by questioning her decisions as a federal district judge to release violent criminals during COVID.

This story has been updated.

Sen. Blackburn had previously signaled her focus in an interview on Fox News: “She would’ve let 1,500 prisoners go during COVID. Among the ones she let go were a murderer, [and] a bank robber. These are hardened criminals back on the streets.”

In the hearing, Blackburn was even more direct in her criticism, alleging that the judge was partial toward criminals and terrorists:

At the start of the pandemic, you advocated, and again I quote, for “each and every criminal defendant in the D.C. Department of Corrections custody should be released.” That would have been 1500 criminals back on the street if you had had your way. And you used the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to release a fentanyl drug dealer, a bank robber addicted to heroin, and a convict who murdered a U.S. Marshal into our communities. But your efforts to protect convicts began before the pandemic. You used your time and talent, not to serve our nation’s veterans or other vulnerable groups, but to provide free legal services to help terrorists get out of Gitmo and go back to the fight.

Update: Two days after Blackburn quoted Jackson’s statement advocating mass release of criminal defendants due to the coronavirus, Jackson clarified in an exchange with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) that the statement was from an opinion which also included that cases must be considered individually, and that “We have to look at the harm to the community that might be caused by the release of individual people. We can’t just release everybody.”

Blackburn said that Judge Jackson had supported “restrictions on children and families, and freedom for criminals.”

Sen. Blackburn connected Judge Jackson’s record to the ongoing crime wave in Democrat-run cities nationwide. She also echoed criticism by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) about Judge Jackson’s allegedly soft sentences for convicted sex offenders.

Republicans were generally muted in their approach on the first day of the hearings, which was largely devoted to opening statements. Judge Jackson also struck a bipartisan tone with a heartfelt speech in which she thanked God and her family.

But several Senators indicated that they would raise tough questions about her record. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he wanted to know why so many left-wing groups preferred Judge Jackson to Judge Michelle Childs of South Carolina, his home state, who was the preferred candidate of Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), a key political ally of President Joe Biden.

Sen. Hawley was measured in his tone, but indicated that he intended to pursue questions about sentencing for sex offenders. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) flagged Judge Jackson’s documented past support for Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter, and noted that he would raise the question of radical left-wing prosecutors who are backed by left-wing donor George Soros.

Graham and others were at pains to distinguish the civil behavior of Republicans from the violent protests and inflammatory accusations that Democrats had used during the confirmation hearings of Republican nominees like Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.