Trump seeks recusal of judge in federal elections case

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday asked the federal judge overseeing his looming trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election to recuse herself, claiming that she has shown a bias against Trump in public statements made from the bench in other cases.

The recusal motion was a risky gambit by Trump’s legal team given that the judge, Tanya Chutkan, will have the initial say about whether or not to grant it. Trump’s lawyers have tried this strategy before, attempting — and failing — to have the judge overseeing his state felony trial in New York City step aside.

In a motion filed in US District Court in Washington, John Lauro, a lawyer for Trump, cited statements Chutkan had made about the former president at hearings for two defendants facing sentencing for crimes they committed at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.

At one of the hearings, in October 2022, Chutkan told the defendant, Christine Priola, a former occupational therapist in the Cleveland school system, that the people who “mobbed” the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”

At the other hearing, in December 2021, Chutkan told Robert Palmer, a Florida man who had hurled a fire extinguisher at police officers that day, that the “people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged.”

Lauro argued that the statements, made before Trump was indicted in the election interference case, undermined the confidence that Chutkan could “administer justice neutrally and dispassionately” and were “inherently disqualifying.”

“Although Judge Chutkan may genuinely intend to give President Trump a fair trial and may believe that she can do so,” he wrote, “her public statements unavoidably taint these proceedings, regardless of outcome.”

Chutkan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, came into Trump’s election interference case with a reputation already in place for imposing harsh sentences on some of the Capitol riot defendants who have ended up in front of her.

On a number of occasions, she has handed out penalties that were higher than those requested by the government, often punctuating her decisions with the catchphrase, “There must be consequences.”

But she is far from the only federal judge in Washington to have suggested that Trump might have culpability while punishing one of his followers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

In June, before sentencing a California man, Daniel Rodriguez, to more than 12 years in prison for using a Taser against Officer Michael Fanone of the D.C. Police, Judge Amy Berman Jackson declared that Rodriguez had been radicalized by what she called Trump’s “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen.”

And in November 2021, Judge Amit Mehta told John Lolos, who climbed into the Capitol through a broken window, that he had been fed “falsehoods” about the election by people who had never been held accountable.

“In a sense, Mr. Lolos, I think you are a pawn,” Mehta said. “You are a pawn in a game played by people who should have known better.”

Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, Jack Smith, who is overseeing the election interference case, declined to comment on the recusal motion.