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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., took aim at White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, saying her warning about threatening the personal safety of justices came a “little late.”
“A little late, don’t you think – now that leftists are firebombing prolifers and threatening the safety of Supreme Court Justices and their families,” Hawley said on Twitter Monday. “Joe Biden could have condemned this violence & harassment and instead encouraged it. He should be held responsible.”
Sen. Josh Hawley. (Photo By Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
Hawley was responding to a tweet in which Psaki warned against threatening the “personal safety” of justices.
“@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism,” Psaki said Monday. “Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.”
Psaki’s comments were an apparent reversal from her stance last week, when she said during a Thursday press briefing that she did not explicitly condemn activists targeting the homes of Supreme Court justices in protest of overturning Roe v Wade.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“Look, I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,” Psaki said when asked about the protests by Fox News’ Peter Doocy.
“We obviously want peoples’ privacy to be respected,” she continued. “We want people to protest peacefully if they want to protest. That is certainly what the president’s view would be.”
Pressed by Doocy about whether President Biden “doesn’t care” about protests outside the justices’ homes, Psaki would not offer a firm statement.
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“I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest,” she said, adding, “We want it, of course, to be peaceful” and Biden “would want people’s privacy to be respected.”
Protestors gather outside the Supreme Court to protest abortion rights (Fox News Digital)
The comments come after protesters descended on the homes Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts over the weekend, with some social media users cheering on the protests.
“Go to people’s homes. Go to their places of worship. Make them as uncomfortable as they are trying to make you. This is not the time for civility, this is the time for mass resistance and demonstration,” cartoonist Jon Rosenberg tweeted.
