Tanya Chutkan, the U.S. District Court judge who will be overseeing Donald Trump's latest, Jan. 6-related indictment, is a left-wing activist who gave $1,500 to an Obama PAC during the Democrat's first presidential run, and who is known for giving out very harsh punishments to J6 prisoners who protested the 2020 election.
Obama appointed the Jamaican-born Chutkan to the court for the District of Columbia in June 2014. Her nomination sailed through the Senate, reportedly without any serious Republican opposition.
The Blaze reported Judge Chutkin "is a leftist Obama appointee whose history of ruthlessly hammering Jan. 6 defendants, fighting the Trump administration, and rubbing shoulders with Biden donors might be of some concern for the Democratic incumbent's top political rival."
The Associated Press, hardly a conservative news source, reported this Wednesday about the judge's J6 sentencing: "Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors. Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all."
AP reported that in October 2021, Chutkan forcefully rejected another judge's criticism of her extra-tough J6 sentences as well as any comparison between the soft sentences given to violent Black Lives Matter rioters and the harsh treatment of J6 protesters: "People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man [George Floyd]. Some of those protesters became violent. ... But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”
Twitter conservatives quickly fixed their sights on Chutkan's left-leaning, pro-Democrat record.
The Northern Virginia Twitter ("X") account "NOVA Campaigns" tweeted: "Peter A. Krauthamer is a former [associate] judge of Superior Court of DC, AND he’s the husband of DC Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump’s Jan 6 indictment In 2012, Peter’s financial disclosure form revealed Tanya Chutkan donated $1500 to 'Obama For America' PAC." The tweet accompanies a copy of Krauthamer's "political contributions" financial disclosure:
https://twitter.com/NoVA_Campaigns/status/1686549031772643328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As the Blaze reports, in the new indictment by special counsel Jack Smith – widely denounced by conservatives – Trump "stands accused of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.; conspiracy to impede an official proceeding (i.e., the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of the electoral vote); obstructing and impeding the certification of the electoral vote; and conspiracy 'to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of' the right to vote and have one's vote counted."
Reacting to the assignment of Trump's J6 case to Chutkan, Julie Kelly, who has closely followed the Biden DOJ's overzealous prosecution of J6 defendants, tweeted Wednesday: "My God. It looks like this case is assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee. Trump is doomed."
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1686495306374844416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In a subsequent tweet, Kelly wrote, "she's the judge who forced Trump to turn over records to [the congressional] J6 committee." With that she quoted from Chutkan's own words on the bench (heralded by anti-Trump "progressives"): "But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President. He retains the right to assert that his records are privileged, but the incumbent President 'is not constitutionally obliged to honor' that assertion."
Evidence of Judge Chutkan's leftism
Conservative media have laid out ample evidence of Judge Chutkan's left-wing bias:
- Daily Mail reports: "Chutkan had worked at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner from 2002 until she was confirmed a federal judge in 2014. ... Boies Schiller has strong connections to the Democratic Party and then-second son Hunter Biden – whose dad President Biden is likely to face Trump in the 2024 election – was of counsel at the firm from 2009 to 2014."
- Washington Free Beacon reports that the Boies Schiller law firm's "three founders contributed a combined $174,000 to Joe Biden's presidential campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, according to campaign finance records."
- Blaze reports that Chutkan is somewhat of a pro-abortion "rights" zealot, who in a 2018 ruling "granted the entire illegal alien population, including young teens, class action certification to demand unfettered access to abortions."
- The previous year, Chutkan ordered the government to "promptly and without delay" transport a 17-year-old illegal alien to a Texas abortion provider in order so that she might have her 16-week-old child exterminated after the Trump administration had attempted to bar her from leaving the detention facility," the Blaze reported Wednesday.
Pro-abortion crusader, anti-death penalty extremist?
Like many on the Left, Chutkan possesses a strange double-standard on defending life. While crusading for the "right" of women to terminate the lives of innocent and defenseless unborn babies through abortion-on-demand, she has gone to extraordinary lengths on the bench to protect the life of at least one convicted serial-murderer sentenced to death row: Daniel Lewis Lee.
Lee was convicted with another man in the 1996 robbery-murder of an Arkansas man, William Mueller, his wife, Nancy Mueller, and their 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Powell. After he and his accomplice shot the three victims with a stun gun, they put bags over their heads and then sealed the bags with duct tape. Lee, a white supremacist, was arrested in 1997 and ultimately sentenced to death after capital punishment was sought by then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, of Democrat political fame.
Lee was sentenced to death in 1990 on three counts of murder, but his sentence was delayed for many years, as is typical with death penalty cases. Finally, in November of 2019. with his challenges rejected, Lee was scheduled to be executed. But that did not happen because U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a preliminary injunction preventing the resumption of federal executions.
Chutkan's activist ruling was eventually overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2020, but she took one last, desperate legal stab at preserving the life of a convicted murderer who had suffocated an 8-year-old girl and her parents to death nearly a quarter of a century earlier. After the victims' families pleaded for Lee's life, the judge issued an emergency order to halt all federal executions, citing the "extreme pain and needless suffering" that would likely result from the execution. But on July 14, 2020, the Supreme Court lifted Chutkan's order and Lee was given death penalty justice through lethal injection.
No Capitol Hill vetting by Republicans
The possibility that she might end up becoming a "judicial activist" might have led to a contentious hearing at Chutkan's nomination in 2014, but instead she skated through. There appears to be no record of any GOP senators even questioning the future judge, and zero Republicans voted against her.
In conservative circles, Republicans are infamous for not being as thorough and tough in questioning Democrat-nominated appointees as Democrats are in questioning Republican-picked nominees. NOVA Campaigns tweeted Wednesday: "How did DC Court Judge Tanya Chutkan become a judge? Obama nominated. Senate Judiciary with 1 Senator present ([Minnesota Democrat] Al Franken) asks 2Qs [questions]. 2.5 mins. of “thank yous” 3 mins. answering 2 Qs. Committee ends. Approved [by full Senate] 95-0. Now she presides in Trump’s Jan 6 indictment."
https://twitter.com/NoVA_Campaigns/status/1686580047488925696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
via wnd