At her first appearance in the criminal case against Donald Trump for his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan repeatedly warned the former president’s lawyers that politics would not be tolerated in her courtroom.
“The fact that [Trump is] running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,” Chutkan said during the August 11 hearing. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be.”
But even as she warns Trump about his “inflammatory” language, Chutkan has routinely issued politically charged rulings and made incendiary statements of her own while presiding over some 30 cases involving Trump supporters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the U.S. Capitol.
A review of thousands of pages of hearing transcripts reveal that Chutkan has repeatedly expressed strong and settled opinions about the issues at the heart of United States v. Donald Trump – the criminal case she is now presiding over.
These include her public assertions that the 2020 election was beyond reproach, that the Jan. 6 protests were orchestrated by Trump, and that the former president is guilty of crimes. She has described Jan. 6 as a “mob attack” on “the very foundation of our democracy” and branded the issue at the heart of the case she is hearing – Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen – a conspiracy theory.
Although judges often make comments from the bench, Chutkan’s strident language raises questions about her impartiality in handling the case against the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024.
The U.S. code that addresses grounds for recusal states, ”Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” One reason to recuse is if the judge has demonstrated “a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party.”
GOP Rep. Matthew Gaetz of Florida recently filed a resolution to condemn and censure Chutkan for exhibiting “open bias and partisanship in the conduct of her official duties as a judge.”
But if the aim among Trump loyalists is to get a new judge assigned to the case, it’s a steep legal hurdle. Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, said that typically a judge can be recused for bias or the appearance of bias “only when the purported bias comes from a source outside the judge's work as a judge.” He continued, “Almost never will a judge be recused for opinions she forms as a judge – in hearing cases and motions. Judges are expected to form opinions based on these 'intrajudicial' sources. It's what judges do.”
A Trump representative declined to comment about Judge Chutkan’s potential bias. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the American Bar Association did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Chutkan.
Appointed by Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2013, Chutkan has been one of the toughest judges on Jan. 6 defendants. In several cases, she has given defendants longer prison terms than recommended by prosecutors. In at least two cases she sentenced defendants to jail time when prosecutors only sought probation. Chutkan herself admitted during a July 2022 court hearing that she is “one of the few judges that's given a lot of terms of incarceration” in Jan 6. cases.
On at least one occasion, Chutkan suggested in open court that Trump should have been charged for his alleged role in what she routinely describes as “an attempt to overthrow the government” on Jan. 6.
Before sentencing Christine Priola, a Trump supporter from Ohio who pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding, to 15 months in jail, Chutkan appeared to lament the fact Trump was not yet in prison. “[The] people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man – not to the Constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant, not to the ideals of this country, and not to the principles of democracy,” Chutkan said on Oct. 28, 2022. “It's a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day." (Emphasis added.)
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/08/23/with_her_many_statements_in_jan_6_courtroom_trump_judge_seems_the_pot_calling_the_defendant_inflammatory_974586.html