Former American President Donald Trump (2017-2021) filed a request this Monday (11) for District Judge Tanya Chutkan to be removed from federal proceedings over his alleged attempts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, which would have led to the invasion of the Capitol, on January 6, 2021.
According to information from Reuters, Trump’s lawyers claim in the motion that the judge’s statements raised doubts about her impartiality in the case.
The request cites a comment made by Chutkan, at a 2022 sentencing hearing for a Capitol invasion defendant, in which she said the riot was the result of “blind loyalty to a person who, by the way, remains free to this day ”. Trump’s defense said the statement indicated the judge’s thinking that he “should be prosecuted and imprisoned.”
The start of the trial in this case has been scheduled for March 4, 2024. The former president is accused in Washington of four crimes: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official process, obstruction and attempted obstruction of an official process and conspiracy against rights.
Chutkan, appointed to the position by former Democratic President Barack Obama, has been at odds with Trump since 2021, when he rejected the tycoon’s request to keep secret documents from his administration related to the invasion of the Capitol.
At the time, Chutkan justified that the executive privilege granted to American presidents to keep documents confidential does not “exist in perpetuity” and Trump would no longer have the right to it because he is not in office. “Presidents are not kings and the applicant [Trump] is not the president,” she said.
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