“On the day Judge Tanya S. Chutkan was randomly selected to preside over former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, she called a childhood friend in Jamaica, Christine Stiebel. Judge Chutkan, who is not especially religious, said to her friend, as Ms. Stiebel recalled it: “Chris, please pray for me. I’ve got the case.”
It was a rare display of unease, even in private, for a woman who has cultivated a seven-year reputation as a temperate but unflinching jurist. Judge Chutkan, 61, a former public defender and civil litigator, will be overseeing the first federal trial of Mr. Trump, set to begin on March 4. The spectacle conjures up the possibility of a likely Republican presidential nominee facing conviction and potential prison time for an assault on American democracy, all before voters go to the polls next November…
So far she has treated Mr. Trump like any other defendant, and has indicated to colleagues that she will approach the trial as she would any criminal proceeding. Even in the midst of a history-making case against a former president, she continues to take on more routine cases and has not requested a reduction in her docket.
But there are differences. Because of threats to her life from Trump supporters, Judge Chutkan no longer rides the five miles by bicycle from her house to the federal courthouse in Washington. Instead she jogs with U.S. marshals on different routes, and then they drive her to work…
On the bench, Judge Chutkan is given equally to bouts of tartness and courtroom banter. When one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, John F. Lauro, responded to a remark of hers by saying that she had “hit the nail on the head,” Judge Chutkan archly replied, “That may be the last time you say this for a while.”
Judge Chutkan is one of the few district court judges in the country to come from the ranks of public defenders, which has informed her rulings. Last month, she granted an emergency motion to release a convicted robber from custody so that he could attend his brother’s funeral a few miles away in Maryland. And she frequently cites her own experiences as a defense attorney pitted against federal prosecutors with seemingly infinite resources…
Judge Chutkan came to her new job with a wealth of trial experience. Her ability to assess witnesses and apply the rules of evidence, in addition to extensive preparation before hearings, helped distinguish her from the start, other judges say.
She has since dealt with several high-profile cases.
In 2017, she presided over the case of a 17-year-old undocumented woman from Central America who discovered she was pregnant after she was detained at the Texas border, but was denied the abortion she requested by the Trump administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.
That same year, an American suspected of being an enemy combatant was captured by Syrian forces in Iraq and handed over to the Defense Department, which detained him for months without releasing his identity or giving him access to counsel.
In both cases, Judge Chutkan bristled against the government prosecutors, pronouncing herself “astounded” and “frankly amazed” by their positions. Judge Chutkan ruled that the woman could have an abortion and that the detainee was permitted to receive a visit from the American Civil Liberties Union and retain counsel. He is now living in Bahrain.
Two years later, at the sentencing hearing of Maria Butina, a Russian firearms advocate who had failed to register as a foreign agent while collecting information from American conservative activists, Judge Chutkan’s sympathies swerved back toward the government. Though Ms. Butina had pleaded guilty and had cooperated extensively with the F.B.I., the judge still ordered her to serve an additional nine months in prison.
Judge Chutkan observed that the defendant’s information gathering had taken place “at a time when the Russian government was acting to interfere and affect the United States’ political and electoral process.” Her remark struck some legal observers as gratuitous, given that even government prosecutors had not accused Ms. Butina of directly conspiring with Russia to meddle in the 2016 American election.
The sentiment is nevertheless consistent with what allies of Judge Chutkan describe as her commitment, given Jamaica’s history of political violence and unrest, to protecting America’s democratic institutions. In 2021, when she ruled against Mr. Trump’s assertion of executive privilege in refusing to hand over documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, her language was pointed.
“Presidents are not kings,” she wrote, “and plaintiff is not president.”
MORE AT:
The New York Times
Tanya Chutkan, an Unflinching Judge in the Trump Jan. 6 Trial
Judge Chutkan, who grew up in a prominent Jamaican family and has extensive trial experience, has been thrust into the limelight. She shows no sign of being intimidated by it.
Reporting from Kingston, Jamaica, and Washington
Oct. 15, 2023
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Sunday, August 6, 2023
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| Betsy with cat at our home on Durand St. in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia |
We would get the Sunday New York Times. If conditions were good we would read it on the lawn of UP's Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill. Halfway around the world the Vietnam War raged.
Our neighbors didn't like the Vietnam War.
Our cat sat on top of a squirrel house our neighbors across Durand St. built. Said cat had her paw bitten and stopped sitting on the squirrel house.
She did crossword puzzles for The New York Times. Her husband was a New York Times correspondent stationed in Singapore during & after World War II.
Our neighbors were more accepting of a different cat named Peaches. When the former New York Times correspondent & New York Times puzzle maker walked their dog. Peaches walked beside her dog friend.
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