Judge Chutkan Should Be Disqualified From Hearing Trump Cases After Defying His J6 Order

Last Monday, I published “D.C. Federal Judges Join the Resistance.” It focused on one D.C. federal district judge, Beryl Howell, who let her emotions get the better of any prudent legal judgment when she refused to implement the president’s direction to the attorney general to dismiss all pending indictments against Jan. 6 defendants “with prejudice.”

She first vented her spleen against the defendants and President Donald Trump (whom she accused of perpetrating a “revisionist myth”) in a wholly gratuitous screed about why the prosecutions were necessary and proper. She then finally admitted that she had no legal right to refuse to dismiss the case. But to show the president who was boss, she refused to dismiss the case with prejudice. That left open the potential for a refiling of the same charges. It was, of course, totally contrary to the president and DOJ’s clear intent.

In that same article, I pointed out that Judge Howell had company. Three of her rebellious colleagues in the D.C. district court also refused to dismiss pending J6 cases with prejudice — including one particularly confused opinion by anti-Trump Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The President’s Proclamation

The president entered his proclamation on Inauguration Day. I describe it more fully in “D.C. Federal Judges Join the Resistance,” but for present purposes, it is important to note that it pardoned persons who had been “convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021”. (Read more from “Judge Chutkan Should Be Disqualified From Hearing Trump Cases After Defying His J6 Order” HERE)