Among those now echoing the Republican allegations about the judicial nominee, in fact, is Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have played a major role in writing the anonymous Q posts. Mr. Watkins, who has denied any part in the Q messages, is running for the Republican nomination to an Arizona congressional seat, largely on the strength of his QAnon association; this week, he qualified for the ballot.

“Judge Jackson is a pedophile-enabler,” Mr. Watkins wrote Wednesday on social media. “Any senator who votes to confirm her nomination is also a pedophile-enabler.”…

“You wouldn’t talk about the extreme stuff, but you would talk about how people in elite power are enabling traffickers,” said Bond Benton, an associate professor at Montclair State University who has studied QAnon. “That is a secret handshake to the Q crowd.”

Other conservative commentators have noted that soft-on-crime or soft-on-sex-crime accusations against politicians or judges have long resonated widely with voters regardless of connection to QAnon, disputing the accusation that the Republican questions are any kind of covert signal.