Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over the federal trial of Donald Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election, on Wednesday rejected his request for dismissal and reiterated her impartiality.
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The ex-president’s lawyers called on him to recuse himself on September 11, citing statements made by the judge during the sentencing hearings of participants in the attack on the Capitol, the seat of Congress, on January 6, 2021.
That day, hundreds of red-hot Donald Trump supporters violated this shrine to American democracy to prevent the certification of his opponent Joe Biden’s victory.
AFP
“Judge Chutkan has suggested, in connection with other cases, that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,” they claimed.
The judge argues, however, that her observations during those hearings, particularly that the participants in the attack on the Capitol “acted out of blind loyalty to a person who, by the way, is still free today,” were findings that she made and were based on She has responded to the defendant’s arguments to ask the court for leniency.
None of her statements in this context, she adds, reflect “an instinctive favoritism or hostility that would make a fair judgment impossible,” a condition established in Supreme Court case law to justify a challenge to that one must remain an exceptional decision. she emphasizes.
Donald Trump had already accused Judge Chutkan of “hatred” against him when she set the trial to begin on March 4, to the great dismay of the Republican primary favorite’s lawyers, who demanded that it be held in April 2026, that is, after the presidential election in November 2024.
Even before his August 3 appearance to plead not guilty, he had reiterated that his only mistake was “contesting a rigged election” and denounced an “unfair judge,” apparently in reference to Ms Chutkan.
As he campaigns to retake the White House, Donald Trump is blaming his legal woes on President Biden’s Democratic administration, which he could find in 2024 on the way to avenging the 2020 election.