Who is Tanya Chutkan, the judge of the 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump?

Since Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan was assigned to oversee the election interference case brought against Donald Trump, the former president, and his legal team have wasted no time in attacking the judge’s credibility and impartiality. The announcement that Judge Chutkan would preside over the hearing came in early August, and this week, Trump’s legal team challenged the appointment, claiming that “she has prejudged both the facts pertinent to this case and President Trump’s alleged culpability.”

Trump’s lawyers have asked that Judge Chutkan recuse herself from the case. The concerns of the legal team stem from the judge’s involvement in civil litigation that allowed Congressional investigators to access documents that the Trump team had been unwilling to hand over, citing presidential privilege.

This play by Trump’s lawyers is not new and has been used in nearly all of the cases brought against him. The fact that the former US leader is politically polarizing allows many of these claims to find support with his voters. However, they are unlikely to lead to the removal of Judge Chutkan from the case.

Who is Judge Tanya S. Chutkan?

Judge Chutkan was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama in 2014. Before beginning her tenure as the US district judge for the District of Colombia, she was a partner at the New York City-based law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner. Before heading into the private sector, she had a long career at the Public Defender Service in Washington, DC, where she worked as a trial attorney. Judge Chutkan earned her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and was an Associate Editor of the Law Review.

What cases has she overseen as a federal Judge?

In her nine years on the federal bench, Judge Chutkan has presided over cases relating to fraud, espionage, immigration, and other politically pertinent topics. Judge Chutkan sentenced Russian politician Maria Butina to prison after determining that she had broken US law by not registering as a foreign agent. Butina was imprisoned for five months in 2018 and now serves in the Duma after returning to Russia.

In 2020, when the Trump adminstration was slated to begin executions after more than seventeen years, Judge Chutkan temporarily blocked four from taking place. The judge argued that the change in medication used to kill the prisoners may represent a violation of their constitutional rights after the legal teams for the defendants raised doubts over whether the single (rather than three-dose) cocktail was legal. However, the judge noted that the arguments from the legal teams focused too heavily on the threat of contracting COVID-19 and not on the new drug, which could constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” In her ruling, Judge Chutkan wrote that while “the court does not mean to minimize the threat COVID-19 presents to inmates who are confined in poorly ventilated facilities where social distancing is not possible [...] a plaintiff cannot state a plausible claim for relief on the theory that a COVID-19 infection will render his execution cruel and unusual.”