Donald Trump's lawyers went to court Monday with a request of US District Judge Tanya Chutkan: Remove yourself from the former president's election subversion trial. The filing argues that comments Chutkan has made about rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, CNN reports, could suggest that "she has prejudged both the facts pertinent to this case and President Trump's alleged culpability." Trump's lawyers stopped short of accusing the judge of being biased against their client but included comments by Chutkan they say could make a reasonable person think so, per CBS News.
Among them were Chutkan's remarks during an October 2022 hearing about the riot. "This was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government, by individuals who were mad that their guy lost," the DC judge said. She later called the actions "blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day." Trump's lawyers wrote that "the public meaning of this statement is inescapable—President Trump is free, but should not be." Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
Chutkan was appointed by President Barack Obama and assigned at random to Trump's case. In presiding over Capitol riot trials, she's regularly imposed sentences beyond what prosecutors requested. Despite that and her statements, a legal ethics professor at New York University said the recusal motion is unlikely to be granted, per the Washington Post. "Things such as what is said or done within the four corners of a case before her as a judge cannot be a basis for recusal because she's doing her job," Stephen Gillers said. "That's what judges do." (More election interference indictment stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
