U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Wednesday denied Donald Trump’s demand that she recuse herself from his federal election interference case. She wrote in a court order that Trump’s attorneys applied a “hypersensitive, cynical, and suspicious” reading of statements she made during her sentencing of two Jan6 Capitol insurgency defendants, charging her with bias against Trump.
These rulings are enormously difficult to overrule, yet Trump, of course, vows an appeal. “He’s not stupid, though,” his lawyer, John Laura asserted, “and we have a Plan B. We will ask for a hearing to recuse President Donald Trump from all charges in this case based upon Judge Chutkan’s court order issued today that denied our request that she recuse. Let me explain.” Yes, please do.
“We will accomplish our goal by using Judge Chutkan’s own recusal guidelines. In her ruling, she explained that to recuse herself she had to ‘display a deep-seated favoritism or antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible.’ She (falsely) claimed that she did not. President Trump, however, by his behavior regarding the charges against him has inarguably met that recusal challenge, and all charges must be recused.
“President Trump has at all times shown ‘a deep-seated . . . antagonism’ and unalterable bias against the charges he faces in Judge Chutkan’s court and about Judge Chutkan herself. On his highly successful platform, Truth Social, he routinely posts harshly antagonistic, patently inappropriate, and wildly scatological comments, for example, ‘WITCH HUNT!’; ‘IF YOU GO AFTER ME I WILL COME AFTER YOU!’; and, directed at Judge Chutkan, ‘Your mamma wears combat boots!’ These are slurs of the worst kind that he repeats ad nauseum. President Trump, by Judge Chutkan’s own reasoning in her court order today, ‘conducted himself in a manner supporting disqualification [i.e., recusal] … by clear and convincing evidence.’ If President Trump’s behavior does not meet the recusal guidelines set out in Judge Chutkan’s well-reasoned court order then one wonders what would?
“Finally, Judge Chutkan wrote, ‘Unbiased, impartial adjudicators are the cornerstone of any system of justice worthy of the label,’ and the ‘extraordinary’ relief of recusal should not be ‘lightly granted.’ We agree with her. To justify the recusal of all charges in this case we have inarguably proved that President Trump’s behavior is so egregious, so harmful, and so disgusting that the high bar of ‘extraordinary’ relief is met, and then some. Therefore, we demand that Judge Chutkan immediately recuse all charges pending against President Trump and as punitive damages she make a sincere apology to President Trump and to the nation for wasting valuable campaign time for the sake of a POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”
