Former president Donald Trump’s lawyer stood in court in late August before Tanya S. Chutkan and told her he planned to challenge Trump’s case as a politically motivated violation of the First Amendment that would be decided by residents of a hopelessly biased city.
“I can’t wait,” Chutkan responded dryly.
Trump’s lawyers soon after put Chutkan on the list of complaints, arguing the judge should recuse herself because her comments in past cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot make it impossible for her to give him a fair trial. Assuming he fails, as legal experts predict he will, Chutkan will preside over the first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history, in the middle of a presidential race where the defendant is the leading Republican contender and tied in polls with the Democratic incumbent he is accused of illegally trying to keep out of power.
Chutkan, 61, will try Trump in the same courthouse where she became a U.S. citizen after emigrating from Jamaica, where she became a federal judge, where she blocked his administration on death penalty and abortion policies and where she ordered his records be given to lawmakers investigating the U.S. Capitol riots. To Trump’s trial she brings her whole career of experience, first a public defender, then a high-powered private attorney, and finally as a federal judge who has handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases for nearly three years and developed a reputation for being more punitive than her peers.
She is one of only two D.C. judges to give every convicted rioter some time behind bars. And she is three times more likely than others to grant or exceed prosecutors’ recommendations, according to Washington Post data, often noting Jan. 6 defendants benefited from advantages other criminals lack.
Chutkan, who declined to comment for this story, was born in Kingston to parents of African and Indian heritage. They raised their children with a strong commitment to education, her sister Robynne Chutkan said in an interview. It was a boarding school scholarship that took their father, the son of indentured servants, from harvesting sugar-cane to performing orthopedic surgery. Robynne and her brother are both doctors; their mother, formerly an English professor, went to law school a year after her daughter. The future judge went to a rigorous all-girls school in Kingston before getting a degree in economics at George Washington University in 1983 and a law degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987.
For a time, Tanya Chutkan tried for a career in dance; her mother was a performer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, which combines modern and ballet with Afro-Caribbean traditions. (Her mother was also a competitive player of bridge, squash, and tennis.) She said at her investiture in 2015 that she chose GW because it was still accepting applications when she made up her mind not to pursue science or medicine like her siblings and father.
“I can’t wait,” Chutkan responded dryly.
Trump’s lawyers soon after put Chutkan on the list of complaints, arguing the judge should recuse herself because her comments in past cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot make it impossible for her to give him a fair trial. Assuming he fails, as legal experts predict he will, Chutkan will preside over the first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history, in the middle of a presidential race where the defendant is the leading Republican contender and tied in polls with the Democratic incumbent he is accused of illegally trying to keep out of power.
Chutkan, 61, will try Trump in the same courthouse where she became a U.S. citizen after emigrating from Jamaica, where she became a federal judge, where she blocked his administration on death penalty and abortion policies and where she ordered his records be given to lawmakers investigating the U.S. Capitol riots. To Trump’s trial she brings her whole career of experience, first a public defender, then a high-powered private attorney, and finally as a federal judge who has handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases for nearly three years and developed a reputation for being more punitive than her peers.
She is one of only two D.C. judges to give every convicted rioter some time behind bars. And she is three times more likely than others to grant or exceed prosecutors’ recommendations, according to Washington Post data, often noting Jan. 6 defendants benefited from advantages other criminals lack.
Chutkan, who declined to comment for this story, was born in Kingston to parents of African and Indian heritage. They raised their children with a strong commitment to education, her sister Robynne Chutkan said in an interview. It was a boarding school scholarship that took their father, the son of indentured servants, from harvesting sugar-cane to performing orthopedic surgery. Robynne and her brother are both doctors; their mother, formerly an English professor, went to law school a year after her daughter. The future judge went to a rigorous all-girls school in Kingston before getting a degree in economics at George Washington University in 1983 and a law degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987.
For a time, Tanya Chutkan tried for a career in dance; her mother was a performer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, which combines modern and ballet with Afro-Caribbean traditions. (Her mother was also a competitive player of bridge, squash, and tennis.) She said at her investiture in 2015 that she chose GW because it was still accepting applications when she made up her mind not to pursue science or medicine like her siblings and father.
