District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday denied a request by former President Donald Trump’s legal team to recuse herself from his 2020 election interference trial in Washington.
Lawyers for the 77-year-old former president had argued that statements made by Chutkan while presiding over the trials of defendants who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 are “disqualifying” and would “taint” the proceedings against Trump.
“[T]he statements certainly do not manifest a deep-seated prejudice that would make fair judgment impossible — the standard for recusal based on statements with intrajudicial origins,” Chutkan, 61, wrote in her opinion.
Chutkan argued in her opinion that the statements “fall short of manifesting ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that the court has conducted itself ‘in a manner supporting disqualification.’”
In their motion for recusal, Trump’s attorneys cited Chutkan’s remarks during the October 2022 sentencing of convicted Capitol rioter Christine Priola, accusing the judge of implying that the former president should be behind bars for his actions on the day of the riot.
“[T]he 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. It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day,” Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said.
The defense team also pointed to a statement made by the Jamaican-born judge in December 2021, during a hearing for Robert Palmer, who attacked police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, arguing that it referred to Trump.
“And it is true, Mr. Palmer – you have made a very good point, one that has been made before — that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged,” Chutkan said.
The jurist insisted Wednesday that she was not referring to Trump in the Priola case, and that she was not advocating for the 2024 Republican presidential to face charges when she made the remark in the Palmer case.
“[T]he court expressly declined to state who, if anyone, it thought should still face charges,” Chutkan wrote. “It is the defense, not the court, who has assumed that the Defendant belongs in that undefined group. Likewise, for the sentencing hearing in Priola, the defense purports to detect an ‘inescapable’ message in what the court did not say: that “President Trump is free, but should not be.”
“The court did state that the former President was free at the time of Priola’s sentence — an undisputed fact upon which Priola had relied for her mitigation argument — but it went no further,” Chutkan argued.
“It bears noting that the court has never taken the position the defense ascribes to it: that former ‘President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,’” she continued. “And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar.”
Chutkan has sentenced dozens of individuals convicted on charges related to the Capitol riot, and her sentences have been some of the toughest handed down.
Trump has previously derided Chutkan as “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally, announced last month that he will introduce a resolution to censure, condemn and investigate the judge, accusing her of engaging in “partisan commentary” on and off the bench that “calls into question her fitness as a judge.”
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has argued that there is no valid basis to have Chutkan removed from the case.
Chutkan has set a trial date of March 4, 2024, in the Trump case. The former president is facing four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US, obstruction, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.