Donald Trump is working to persuade people to believe that the legal cases against him are merely a manifestation of a political vendetta against him and his MAGA followers — pursued by so-called “deep state” actors to preserve their power against his insurrectionist ideas. (Others, of course, think the various prosecutions against Trump are nothing less than an attempt to preserve democracy by ensuring no one is above the law.)
Trump has been exceptionally active on social media in his attempts to denigrate not just Special Counsel Jack Smith and Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, who are separately pursuing criminal cases against him, but also Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the Special Counsel’s federal case against Trump on multiple conspiracy charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States in United States v. Donald J. Trump.
Judge Chutkan has ruled on multiple cases involving rioters at the Capitol on January 6, delivering jail sentences to numerous defendants. Politico summed up her role in various Jan 6 cases with this headline: “Trump’s new judge is a tough Jan. 6 sentencer — and has a history with him.”
That history includes: “The Obama-appointed jurist (Chutkan) ruled in fall 2021 that the House Jan. 6 select committee could access reams of Trump’s White House files — a ruling that was subsequently upheld by an appeals court and left undisturbed by the Supreme Court.”
It’s Chutkan’s pronouncements in some of those cases that Trump is pushing to persuade the public that the Judge is predisposed to Trump’s guilt for the Jan 6 events, using the above quote to illustrate what he characterizes as Chutkan’s desire to see him in jail.
The judge points out, without mentioning a name, that the “one man” Jan 6ers committed their acts in fealty to — that being Trump — “remains free to this day.”
The reactions are as divided as the country. One representative responder writes: “Yup. And that statement right there should be page one of the Motion to Recuse her.”
Other reactions interpret Chutkan’s words as a legitimate and appropriate reaction to the cases before her. “So he thinks a Judge who saw what happened can’t have an opinion?” writes one. “Every Judge in this country saw what happened and Judges can have an opinion.”
