Judge Tanya Chutkan Refuses Trump’s Request That She Recuse Herself in 2020 Election Case
“In seeking Chutkan’s recusal, defense lawyers cited statements she had made in two sentencing hearings of participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol”
Tanya Chutkan, the judge in Trump’s 2020 election case in Washington, DC, has refused a request from Trump that she recuse herself.
Trump’s legal team made the request based on some of Chutkan’s prior comments.
The Associated Press reports:
Judge Chutkan denies Trump’s request to recuse herself in federal election subversion case
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said Wednesday she won’t recuse herself from Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case in Washington, rejecting the former president’s claims that her past comments raise doubts about whether she can be fair.
Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama and was randomly assigned to Trump’s case, said in her written decision that she sees no reason to step aside. The case, scheduled for trial in March, accuses the Republican of illegally scheming to overturn his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
There’s a high bar for recusal, and legal experts had widely considered Trump’s request to be a long shot aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the case publicly that could only sour the relationship between the judge and the defense in court…
In seeking Chutkan’s recusal, defense lawyers cited statements she had made in two sentencing hearings of participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol in which they said she had appeared to suggest that Trump deserved to be prosecuted and held accountable. They said the comments suggested a bias against him that could taint the proceedings.
The Washington Examiner has more:
Chutkan said that while recusal motions served an essential purpose, “justice also demands that judges not recuse without cause,” according to the 20-page decision, which cited a past court decision that stated recusal motions can be a “procedural weapon to harass opponents and delay proceedings.”
“Motions for recusal could also be wrongfully deployed as a form of ‘judge shopping,’” Chutkan added.
Ever since Trump was indicted in August on four charges accusing him of a scheme to subvert the 2020 election, he has clung to Chutkan’s past rhetoric and harsh sentences given to defendants involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, arguing her words indicate an “apparent prejudgment of guilt.”
“The public must have confidence that President Trump’s constitutional rights are being protected by an unbiased judicial officer. No president is a king, but every president is a United States citizen entitled to the protections and rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,” his lawyer John Lauro wrote in a court filing.
Here are a few Twitter reactions:
To no one’s surprise, Judge Chutkan has denied Trump’s motion asking her to recuse.
Like a typical loudmouth bully, Chutkan, who absolutely was referring to Trump in both matters, now claims she wasn’t. pic.twitter.com/uAAvsScjzM
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) September 27, 2023
She will never recuse. This trial is her retirement package. It is her future book proposal and million-dollar advance.
She doesn’t care if SCOTUS nukes her case post-conviction. Chutkan is going to convict Trump to become a Democrat celebrity, and nothing is going to stop her. https://t.co/c4StTwn87w
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 28, 2023
DC Obama Judge Tanya Chutkan won't be fair.
Marxist revolutionary family.
Obama donor.
Appointed her and husband to federal bench.
Leftwing activist against Trump.
All along.
Lenient on real criminals.
But harsh on Trump supporters.
Too partisan to hide her Trump hatred. pic.twitter.com/CQvXnz4Szd
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) September 27, 2023
Does anyone really believe Trump can get a fair trial in Washington, DC?
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Comments
Of course she refused to recuse herself.
She is the black face of the multitude of black persecutors and “just-us” warriors who want to shut down any chance of normalcy in this Republic.
She has made her decision. Bring the guilty party in, we’ll give him a semblance of a “fair trial,” and then hang him. But not until she gets a chance to piss all over the candidate and the Constitution.
Scott Adams says it’s not the blinding stupidity that it appears to be but just cognitive dissonance. A 20 page reply supports that but still blinding stupidity is alive.
Both by statute (28 USC s455) and case law ( Caperton v Massey & Liteky v. US) she has not the option but the required duty to disqualify herself,….
She gave up the right to hear this case when she made derogatory comments about Donald Trump. It’s her own fault.
This all show how broken our legal system is.
Obviously, this was always going to be the outcome. She – like most every other judge in these Trump cases – could not care less if she’s eventually overturned on appeal. All she cares about is getting as much manure stuck to Trump before people start voting next fall. The earliest a Circuit Court might hear the first post-conviction appeal on this or any case is 2025. So, expect more of the same in this case as well as in all the other cases with the possible exception of the Florida case where the Judge seems to be less enamored with the government’s case.
I’m not supporting Trump in the primary. But, anyone with just a remedial understanding of history should understand the danger of what’s happening to Trump and several others. The eagerness of Democrats to discard centuries of prosecutorial & judicial restrain in a political vendetta speaks volumes with respect to what a perilous time we’re currently living in. Things can unravel very quickly in a country, as we learned in the 1860s.
Since she won’t recognize a record demonstrating more than a reasonable basis to question her impartiality, President Trump has to file a mandamus petition to the 2nd Circuit and get an order forcing her to recuse herself. Don’t know how impartial the 2nd circuit is though. Never-Trump dementia afflicts the judiciary as much as any institution.
In a sane world he wouldn’t need to do that because she wouldn’t have been appointed in the first place.
Sadly we no longer live in a sane world.
But she got the case at random, mailman. Wink, wink.
Some wag suggested that it took 658 spins of the selection “wheel” in order to randomly select Chutkan.
Whoops. Make that the DC circuit court, which is probably worse being packed with dems. So much law fare and hack prosecutors and judges out there it gets confusing.
Trump had no chance of getting a recusal once he saw other DC District judges, along with the chief judge, sitting in the back row of the courtroom when Trump was arraigned. That was a signal that no judge would be reprimanded for disobeying policy and precedence.
To me, that was/is an Impeachable offense. Unlike the other elected federal constitutional and executive office holders where the standard for Impeachment is ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ the standard to Impeach a federal judge is anything other than ‘good behavior.’ The USC says they may ‘hold their office during good behavior,’ full-stop. There was NOTHING good about their hyper-partisan demonstration.
That none of the GOP have even commented on what happened in that courtroom (from what I can discern), speaks to how hopeless the GOP caucus is.
” how hopeless the GOP caucus is.”
Which is why blind allegiance to GOP is unwise.
Really, they did that, like court-watchers or papparazzi? Never heard of something like that happening before.
Of course she would deny it. But you file it so it’s another issue for the appeal. Trump isn’t going to win at trial, given the biased judges and juries, it’s the appellate process that will help him.
Sad comment on our philosophically corrupt judicial system.
May depend on whether SCOTUS takes the case and reverses. We’re getting down to brass tacks here. Very little wiggle room left in our system as it splits down the middle.
No shopping says the bought judge.
Shes a leftist hack that can’t get past her politics. I can think of a better reason to recue.
If that were the criterion, the entire DC judiciary would have to recuse.
So, what are these statements and the contexts in which they were said or written and how do they supposedly demonstrate that she should recuse herself? The quoted sections from the AP and Washington Examiner don’t explain and neither does the LI commentary.
If “There’s a high bar for recusal, and legal experts had widely considered Trump’s request to be a long shot” is true then why should we be upset?
This, if her response is true, is why context not just the words themselves are important:
The judge wrote Wednesday that her past reference to Trump during a separate defendant’s trial, where she noted he is “free to this day,” was not a suggestion that she believed he should be prosecuted and jailed. Rather, she said it was a “verbal reiteration” of the defendant’s argument.
“So, what are these statements and the contexts in which they were said or written and how do they supposedly demonstrate that she should recuse herself?”
A short internet search will turn up the full statements. But I notice that even though you don’t possess that information, it didn’t prevent you from making assumptions about the judge’s statements and their relevance to her refusal to recuse herself.
Perhaps I could find it with “a short Internet search”. The point is that when reading an article/editorial about the subject I shouldn’t have to.
What assumptions do you think I made? Everything I said is either a question or has a disclaimer precisely for the purpose of preventing false accusations such as yours.
Posting your L’s online.
Bold strategy, Cotton. Hope it works for you.
L’s like replying with insults because you cannot address the issues raised and questions asked?
If it’s doubtful, the judge isn’t supposed to expect the benefit of the doubt and just assert impartiality. She should recuse. Just let someone else try the case.
Why is it this judge’s job to prevent judge shopping? Isn’t it her job to try the cases in front of her, period? If she’s also got a side job spinning the roulette wheel that assigns cases to judges, she’s not supposed to admit it.
“…that could only sour the relationship between the judge and the defense in court.”
Oh, really? Look, it is fairly obvious to anybody with an IQ above freezing that this judge was not selected randomly, she hates Trump, will rule against him on every single thing before her, and in all odds will receive either a cushy ghostwritten book deal or no-show teaching position for her actions in attacking the Left’s most hated enemy. There will be no repercussions, no removal from the case, no removal from the bench, nothing but praise from the media and the Dems unending until she releases her verdict, which undoubtedly she has already begun writing.
But there’s no two-tier justice system in the US. Nope. None at all.
The very idea that the biased judge themselves is the one that decides whether they are biased has always been utterly INSANE to me.
Is it anything like the very idea that tyrants you need to be protected from are the very ones that get to “interpret” the document that supposedly prevents them from tyrannizing you?
I for one am shocked! I never saw that coming!
when was the last time a dem Judge ever recused themself?, even if they should by law. some other high authority should strike her down or have the case moved