Tough punisher of Capitol rioters: Tanya Chutkan, the judge in Trump’s latest election case

Former US president Donald Trump is indicted for the third time. On Tuesday, a Washington grand jury voted to charge Trump on four counts connected to his efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election and his role in the events leading up to the 6 January, 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. The indictment claims that Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to sway the outcome of the 2020 election and charges him with four felonies: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. He will likely appear before a magistrate court in US District Court in Washington DC on Thursday, following which the matter will be assigned to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who stood out as one of the toughest punishers of rioters who stormed the US Capitol in an attack fuelled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. She has also ruled against him before. Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, will oversee the case accusing Trump of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the two months leading up to the violent assault on the US Capitol by his supporters. Who is Tanya Chutkan? Tanya Sue Chutkan is a Jamaican-American lawyer and judge from Washington, DC. She was born on 5 July 1962. Chutkan received her bachelor’s degree in economics from George Washington University and later pursued a law degree at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her legal career began in 1991 when she worked as a trial attorney and supervisor for the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia. She served in this role until 2002. After that, she joined the legal firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where she specialised in complicated civil litigation, particularly antitrust class action cases. Chutkan remained with the firm for 12 years, gaining significant experience in handling complex legal matters. **Also Read: Donald Trump faces new charges: What you need to know** In 2014, Tanya Sue Chutkan was appointed as a United States District Judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. As a judge, she has presided over various cases, demonstrating her expertise and knowledge in the legal field. Though Chutkan was randomly appointed to oversee the special counsel’s criminal case, she is no stranger to 6 January, 2021, litigation. Chutkan has ruled on a Trump case in the past Chutkan has has handed down prison sentences in 6 January, 2021, riot cases that are harsher than Justice Department prosecutors recommended. Chutkan has also ruled against Trump before in a separate 6 January case. In November 2021, she refused his request to block the release of documents to the US House’s 6 January committee by asserting executive privilege. [caption id=“attachment_12946482” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Donald Trump has been charged by the Justice Department for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and witness tampering. Reuters[/caption] She rejected his arguments that he could hold privilege over documents from his administration even after President Joe Biden had cleared the way for the National Archives to turn the papers over. She wrote that Trump could not claim his privilege “exists in perpetuity.” In a memorable line from her ruling, Chutkan wrote, “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.” Trump will make his first court appearance on Thursday before Magistrate Judge Moxila A Upadhyaya. Such judges handle initial matters in federal cases. Known for tough sentences Chutkan has sentenced at least 38 people convicted of Capitol riot-related crimes. All 38 received prison terms, ranging from 10 days to over five years, according to an Associated Press analysis of court records. She is one of two dozen judges in Washington, DC, who collectively have sentenced nearly 600 defendants for their roles in the 6 January siege. More than one third of them avoided sentences that included incarceration. 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. [caption id=“attachment_12946462” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Nadine Seiler protest as she holds a banner outside federal court in Washington. AP[/caption] Chutkan has said prison can be a powerful deterrent against the threat of another insurrection. “Every day we’re hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024,” she said in December 2021 before sentencing a Florida man who attacked police officers to more than five years behind bars. At the time, that sentence was the longest for a 6 January case. “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,” she said. Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee, suggested during a hearing in 2021 that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared with the people arrested during racial injustice protests following George Floyd’s 2020 murder. **Also Read: The charges looming over Donald Trump in US 2020 election probe** Without naming her colleague, Chutkan criticised McFadden’s suggestion days later. “People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said during an October 2021 hearing. “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 6 January riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.” With inputs from AP