The federal judge assigned to the election fraud case against former President Donald Trump has stood out as one of the toughest punishers of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack fueled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. She has also ruled against him before.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, will oversee the case accusing Trump of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the two months leading up to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Chutkan has often has handed down prison sentences in Jan. 6, 2021, riot cases that are harsher than Justice Department prosecutors recommended.
Chutkan has also ruled against Trump before in a separate Jan. 6 case. In November 2021, she refused his request to block the release of documents to the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 committee by asserting executive privilege.
She rejected his arguments that he could hold privilege over documents from his administration even after President Joe Biden had cleared the way for the National Archives to turn the papers over. She wrote that Trump could not claim his privilege “exists in perpetuity.”
In a memorable line from her ruling, Chutkan wrote, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
Trump will make his first court appearance on Thursday before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya. Such judges handle initial matters in federal cases.
Chutkan has sentenced at least 38 people convicted of Capitol riot-related crimes. All 38 received prison terms, ranging from 10 days to over five years, according to an Associated Press analysis of court records.
She is one of two dozen judges in Washington, D.C., who collectively have sentenced nearly 600 defendants for their roles in the Jan. 6 siege. More than one third of them avoided sentences that included incarceration.
Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors. Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.
Chutkan has said prison can be a powerful deterrent against the threat of another insurrection.
“Every day we’re hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024,” she said in December 2021 before sentencing a Florida man who attacked police officers to more than five years behind bars. At the time, that sentence was the longest for a Jan. 6 case.
“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” she said.
Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee, suggested during a hearing in 2021 that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared with the people arrested during racial injustice protests following George Floyd’s 2020 murder.
Without naming her colleague, Chutkan criticized McFadden’s suggestion days later.
“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said during an October 2021 hearing.
“But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”
(AP)
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12 Responses
Excellent! And severely punished they should be.
The former party of law and order are most disturbed.
If Obama had a mother she’d look like this judge…Oh no I forgot, his mother was white.
uh oh. I smell trouble.
She should be assigned to the Biden family fraud , & find them all guilty !!!!
If you are planning on show trial for political crimes (think People’s Courts), you need the right sort of judge, though a TV series “Sliders” once had an episode where Joseph Wapner played the judge in the “People’s Court” in an alternative history where America was a left-wing dictatorship and political misdeeds got you sent to a gulag in Alaska (which may be what some on the WOKE left aspire to).
“If Obama had a mother she’d look like this judge…Oh no I forgot, his mother was white.”
Kinsler: And thanks for reminding us what a jerk you are. We had forgotten. Judge Chutkin is one of the most respected judges on the D.C. District Court and was confirmed by the Senate 94-0. Even Ted Cruz voted to confirm her.
Good! The scum has lured thousands of his supporters into doing something stupid. Of course, it wasn’t an insurrection, if they would really want to get the congressmen and senators, a few fat Afrocops wouldn’t stand a chance against thousands armed and trained people. He wouldn’t pardon them, and now they are being hunted like rabbits. So let the guy himself get a doze of coon justice.
@Gadolhadorah What you are saying may be true and she MAY be a fair-minded judge when the case is not about someone or someone that she is passionate about. In this case however, it is fair to assume that she, like all the lefties, would want nothing more than to see Trump in a jump suit behind bars. That she is such a baalas midos and she would be able to temper that intense hatred and preside fairly over this case is hard to believe.
Another affirmative action hire who has no legitimate qualifications other than being some pathetic political leftist hack
So why don’t we wait and see how she paskens? A lot of info about voter fraud will be coming out now. Maybe she will say Trump was right. Maybe they will even give her the biden case since she is so good. Since everything about the dems is so grand then why not give them the benefit of daught that they will get to the bottom of all those fraud video’s we saw etc. There is still a lot of explaining to do. Lets not forget clinton story.
>>>Judge Chutkin is one of the most respected judges on the D.C. District Court
Respected by who? What did she ever do that earned her so much respect?
From the few things that both sides seem to agree on is that Trump will be facing a very biased judge and jury.
Chaya13: Agree with your thoughts but I suspect people will be surprised with the way she conducts this case, especially in terms of procedural motions and due process. If anyone bothers to read her decisions, she has been upheld by the D.C. Circuit in the large percentage of her cases appealed and as a former Legal Aid attorney, tends to push back frequently on aggressive DOJ attorneys.
Chezky/Smerl: If you want to see “affirmative action” hires, I’ll post a list of Republican judges pushed through in the last year of the Trump administration from second tier law schools, and w/o much, if any, relevant courtroom experience. Their primary yichus was having close ties to Trump-velt or the federalist society. Chutkin was unanimously confirmed with support from even the most conservative members of the Senate.