Republican Representative Matt Gaetz has introduced a resolution to censure U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan and has accused her of showing “political bias from the bench.”
Gaetz, who represents Florida’s 1st congressional district, also claimed that the judge was “openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter riots of 2020” and criticized sentences she had handed down to defendants involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Chutkan is presiding over the case in Washington, D.C. where former President Donald Trump has been indicted as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. District Court for D.C. via email for comment.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Earlier this month, a grand jury indicted Trump on four charges in the Capitol riot probe: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied all wrongdoing, while he has also repeatedly attacked Smith’s probe. Trump, who is the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, also has accused the special counsel of election interference with his federal investigation.
“Tanya Chutkan was appointed as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by President Barack Obama after donating thousands of dollars to get him elected,” a statement from Gaetz said on Friday.
Chutkan donated $1,500 to Obama’s campaign between 2008 and 2009, according to official documents.
Gaetz’s statement said Chutkan “has inappropriately expressed support for violent protests that occurred in the summer of 2020, all the while handing down multiple tough sentences to non-violent January 6th defendants. Additionally, during a sentencing hearing in October 2022, she inappropriately lamented that President Donald Trump ‘remains free to this day.'”
Chutkan is known for tough sentences. In October 2021, she sentenced Matthew Mazzocco, a Texas man who had taken part in the storming of the Capitol building on January 6, to 45 days in jail plus 60 hours of community service, going beyond the punishment recommended by prosecutors, which was three months under home confinement and probation.
“It is deeply concerning that a United States District Court judge would exhibit such blatant political bias from the bench,” Gaetz said.
“Judge Tanya Chutkan’s extreme sentencing of January 6th defendants, while openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, showcases a complete disregard for her duty of impartiality and the rule of law. Justice may be blind, but the American people are not—we see Judge Chutkan for her actions, and we rebuke them in the greatest possible sense,” he said.
Chutkan has previously rejected comparing the Capitol riot to the violence following the death of George Floyd in 2020.
“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 wrote in October 2021.
“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 January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy,” she said.
Gaetz’s resolution comes following criticism directed at Chutkan by former President Trump, who called the judge “highly partisan” and “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” on social media on Monday.
Chutkan has also been the subject of an alleged death threat as Texas woman Abigail Jo Shry has been charged with threatening to kill the judge after allegedly phoning the court in Washington, D.C. She is also accused of threatening to kill a Democratic member of Congress and using a racial slur.