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13-09-2023
WASHINGTON: The four-time criminally indicted former US President Donald Trump filed a motion through his lawyers Monday which maintained that District Judge Tanya Chutkan should be removed from his case as her past statements show clear bias against the 77-year-old Republican forerunner.
Judge Chutkan is set to preside over the case regarding Donald Trump’s involvement in subverting 2020 election results and the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riots.
Donald Trump maintained in his filings that US District Judge Chutkan should step aside because of “past statements she has made about [Donald Trump] that demonstrate bias.”
“Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,” the 77-year-old’s attorneys said.
“Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying.”
The lawyers of the former president also stated that “although Judge Chutkan may genuinely intend to give President Trump a fair trial and may believe that she can do so her public statements unavoidably taint these proceedings, regardless of outcome.”
According to the experts on the legal matters, the unusual recusal motion was unlikely to succeed because it is Chutkan herself who would have to voluntarily agree to step aside.
Chutkan last month set March 4, 2024, for the start of Trump’s trial on charges of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump, who is also bidding once again for the White House in 2024 against Joe Biden, pleaded not guilty to the charges in a court appearance in Washington last month.
In the motion seeking Chutkan’s recusal, Trump’s attorneys cited statements the judge has made at sentencing hearings for participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by the billionaire Trump supporters.
At the October 2022 sentencing of a woman for her role in the assault on a joint session of Congress, Chutkan described January 6 as “nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government.”
She added, in an apparent reference to Trump, that it was inspired by “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
