In a hearing on Wednesday that was as performative as it was embarrassingly ill-informed, Senate Republicans tried to blame one of President Joe Bidens judicial nominees Nina Morrison, an attorney with the Innocence Project who has freed dozens of innocent people from prison for driving up violent crime across America.

Morrison, 52, is up for a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Of New York. She is the senior litigation counsel at the New York-based Innocence Project, an organization focused on exonerating wrongly convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

She has been lead or co-counsel on cases that have freed more than 30 innocent people from prison and death row.

But Republicans in the Judiciary Committee went after Morrison as if she had committed the crimes that her clients were convicted of that they didnt actually commit, either. They tried to blame her for recent spikes in violent crimes in cities, and pressed her on whether she felt guilty about freeing people from prison who had been convicted of violent crimes, glossing over the fact that they had been exonerated by DNA evidence.

The whole of your record is deeply disturbing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Morrison.

Across this country, Americans are horrified at skyrocketing crime rates, at skyrocketing homicide rates, at skyrocketing burglary rates, at skyrocketing carjacking rates, he said. All of those are the direct result of the policies youve spent your entire lifetime advancing.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Morrison he planned to oppose her nomination, along with any other nominees the Biden administration puts forward who are soft on crime.

I will oppose you and anyone else the administration sends to us who do not understand the necessity of the rule of law, he said.

None of it made sense until you noticed a pattern in the attacks Republicans were making: First, use a judicial nomination to wage a proxy fight against progressive prosecutors , a cohort of left-leaning Democratic district attorneys who have sought reforms to the bail system, curbed enforcement of lower-level marijuana offenses and increased the use of diversion programs over jail time. Second, falsely cast these Democratic district attorneys policies as the reason for spikes in crime , and then tie the judicial nominee to those policies and therefore the violence.

The whole situation the faux outrage, the claims that Morrison was soft on crime, the claims that Republicans were the ones who were tough on crime was a ridiculous spectacle, given that Morrison has spent her entire career getting innocent people out of prison.

The GOP attacks perhaps offer a preview of how Republicans on the panel plan to go after Bidens Supreme Court nominee when she comes before the committee.