Judge Tanya Sue Chutkan is a tough Trump critic, toughest Jan. 6 sentencer.
DC 5.05am / London 10.05am
Imagine the 2nd biggest democratic country on universe get riot 14 days before “change a regime”, in the wake of (still dangerous) coronavirus. Sad that 5 of the 6 alleged Co-conspirators are lawyers (and therefore officers of the court). According to Health Agency, casualties because coronavirus in the U.S. between Jan 1-Jan 31 2021 around 1,700 - 1,750. For FBI, Department of Justice, and every stakeholder, Jan 6 riot is very serious breach. Trump was pleased by the Capitol riot. He felt vindicated. Then he and Giuliani "attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol". Monstrous.
Shortly after learning he was being indicted a third time (Aug 1st, 2023, around 4pm DC), Trump had a private dinner with the top leadership at Fox News as they lobbied him to attend the first GOP presidential primary debate this month.
Trump led Jan 6 lawyer John F Lauro, founder of the Lauro Law Firm—now known as Lauro & Singer, explained to Fox: "I would like them to try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations were false." Former VP Michael “Mike” Richard Pence with quite the statement tonight: “Today's indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
With U.S. District Judge Tanya Sue Chutkan as the trial judge overseeing his case in Washington, Donald Trump’s legal troubles in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack come near full circle. Chutkan is married to fellow Obama appointee Associate Judge Peter Krauthamer of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The former Democratic president picked him for the 15-year term in 2011.
Trump’s federal criminal indictment on charges of attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election was randomly assigned Tuesday to Chutkan, 61, who nearly two years ago became one of the first federal judges in D.C. to reject the former president’s efforts to use executive privilege to withhold White House communications from Jan. 6 investigators, in that instance from the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. Trump was pleased by the Capitol riot. He felt vindicated. Then he and Giuliani "attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol". Monstrous.
The January 6 indictment against Trump is a lucid explanation of how the former president tried to steal your vote and came far to close to ending the peaceful transfer of power. Chief Justice Roberts should immediately amend the rules to permit cameras in federal courts. The American public is entitled to watch the proceedings against Trump in their entirety. Anything less would be an injustice. Chief Justice must authorize televising Trump's trial on charges connected to his attempts to interfere in the outcome of the 2024 election. Justice demands it.
Even as the special counsel, Jack Smith, pursued an investigation of former President Donald J. Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, the Justice Department did not slow its sweeping pursuit of pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
As of July, prosecutors have charged nearly 1,100 people in connection with the attack. The Justice Department could ultimately bring indictments against as many as 1,000 more in the months to come.
More than 350 people charged so far stand accused of assaulting police officers, including about 110 who used a deadly or dangerous weapon. Another 310 people have been charged with the obstruction of an official proceeding, the go-to count that prosecutors have used to describe how members of the mob disrupted the certification of the election that was taking place inside the Capitol at a joint session of Congress.
More 100 rioters have gone to trial in Federal District Court in Washington, starting with Guy Wesley Reffitt, a Texas militiaman who was convicted in March 2022 of helping to lead an advance against the police that resulted in the first violent breach of the Capitol.
The vast majority of those who have faced trial have been found guilty of at least one crime or another; only two people — a former government contractor from New Mexico and a low-level member of the Oath Keepers militia — have been acquitted of all the charges they faced.
About 560 defendants have been sentenced. Of those, more than 330 have been ordered to serve some amount of time in prison.
The most serious and complex trials so far have involved the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, another far-right organization. The leaders of the groups — Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio — were both convicted of seditious conspiracy along with some of their lieutenants.
In her Trump documents opinion on Nov. 9, 2021, Chutkan ruled that Congress had a strong public interest in obtaining White House communications and other records that could shed light on the violent attack by a mob of Trump supporters who injured dozens of police, ransacked offices and forced the evacuation of lawmakers meeting to confirm the results of the 2020 election. Chutkan noted that President Biden had waived executive privilege, overcoming his predecessor’s attempt to invoke the confidentiality of presidential communications, a ruling affirmed by a federal appeals court and left undisturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President,” Chutkan wrote. “And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbent’s view is accorded greater weight.”
In addition to his involvement in more than 4,000 lawsuits over the course of his half-century in real estate, entertainment and politics, Donald Trump has been the subject of investigations by federal, state and regulatory authorities in every decade of his long career.
1970s
Federal investigators accuse Trump and his father of discriminating against Black New Yorkers in renting out apartments. Case settles with no admission of guilt, but Trump has to run ads pledging not to discriminate.
1980s
Federal investigators look into whether Trump gave apartments in his Trump Tower to figures connected with organized crime to keep his project on track. Trump denies the allegation. Separately, New Jersey officials probe his ties with mob figures, then grant him a casino license.
1990s
New Jersey regulators investigate Trump’s finances and conclude he “cannot be considered financially stable,” yet extend his casino license to protect jobs at his Atlantic City hotel.
2000s
Federal securities regulators cite Trump’s casino for downplaying negative results in financial reporting.
2010s
New York state sues Trump, alleging his Trump University defrauded more than 5,000 people. Trump is found personally liable. After Trump becomes president, he is impeached — and acquitted — over allegations that he solicited foreign interference in the U.S. presidential election.
2020s
Trump is impeached — and acquitted — a second time for incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. New York state sues Trump, alleging he inflated assets to mislead lenders. He is also under criminal investigation for events surrounding Jan. 6 and his handling of classified documents.
In other side, in NYC, The New York Attorney General’s office said it was “ready for trial” in the case against Trump, two of his children and The Trump Organization that alleged they engaged in widespread fraud.
“The case is ready for trial,” Kevin Wallace, senior enforcement counsel for the office, wrote in a filing Monday.
Attorney General Letitia Ann James (D) filed the lawsuit in September 2022 against the former president, his corporation, and three of his children — Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. A New York appeals court dismissed charges against Ivanka Trump.
In the lawsuit, James alleged that the defendants, over a number of years, manipulated property values to obtain investments and loan benefits.
The lawsuit seeks US$250 million in financial penalties and asks the court to ban the Trumps from serving as officers or directors in any corporation registered or licensed in New York, effectively preventing them from operating their business in New York.
The lawsuit also asks the court to prohibit the former president and his business from acquiring New York real estate and from applying for loans from a New York institution for five years.
The Trumps have all repeatedly denied claims of wrongdoing and accused James of operating a politically motivated crusade against him. Trump’s team has repeatedly tried to dismiss the case.
Back to the DC. Chutkan agreed with the House that the matter was of “unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public’s confidence in them” and could help lead to legislation “to prevent such events from ever occurring again.”
About 13 months later, the House committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for criminal charges. And two and a half years after the Jan. 6 attack, a grand jury indicted Trump on Tuesday, charging him with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump is scheduled to make his first appearance Thursday before a magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Washington, and after that, Chutkan will take over the case, facing enormous scrutiny over the high-profile case.
Chutkan was appointed to the U.S. bench in 2014 by President Barack Obama and was one of the first public defenders appointed to the federal trial court in Washington. A trained dancer raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Chutkan graduated from George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School before working in private practice with two Washington firms and serving 11 years with the D.C. Public Defender Service. She then joined the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, where as partner she was a white-collar defense specialist focusing on complex antitrust class-action cases.
“For a lot of people, I seem to check a lot of boxes: immigrant, woman, Black, Asian. Your qualifications are always going to be subject to criticism and you have to develop a thick skin,” Chutkan was quoted as saying in a February 2022 profile posted by the federal judiciary.
The featured speaker at an African American History Month event hosted by the judiciary’s Defender Services Office, Chutkan cited “the dignity and the brilliance” of former federal judge and NAACP Legal Defense Fund litigator Constance Baker Motley and her predecessors as a model. “They put their lives on the line every time they did their jobs and had to put up with far more than I have,” she said.
Chutkan has been the toughest sentencing judge on the D.C. federal court for Jan. 6 defendants. Through mid-June, Chutkan sentenced every one of the 31 defendants to have come before her to at least some jail or prison time. She has exceeded prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations nine times and granted them 14 times, while court-wide, judges have sentenced below government recommendation about 80 percent of the time.
“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort, is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” Chutkan has explained from the bench.
Alluding to Trump’s role in the events, Chutkan said at another defendant’s sentencing: He “did not go to the United States Capitol out of any love for our country. … He went for one man.”
Chutkan said during the federal defender event that she drew inspiration from young people.
“Young people inspire me in their openness, in their tolerance, and in their desire to fight injustice,” she was quoted as saying. “I can’t let them down. I have to be an example to them.”
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-prada- Adi Mulia Pradana is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Arch enemies of the tobacco industry, (still) survive after getting doxed. Now figure out, or, prevent catastrophic situations in the Indonesian administration from outside the government. After his mom was nearly killed by a syndicate, now I do it (catch all these blunders, especially blunders by an asshole syndicates) for free. Writer actually facing 12 years attack-simultaneously (physically terror, cyberattack terror) by his (ex) friend in IR UGM / HI UGM (all of them actually indebted to me, at least get a very cheap book). 2 times, my mom nearly got assassinated by my friend with “komplotan” / weird syndicate. Once assassin, forever is assassin, that I was facing in years. I push myself to be (keep) dovish, pacifist, and you can read my pacifist tone in every note I write. A framing that myself propagated for years.
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