Summary
➡ The Justice Department is requesting a gag order in the Judge Chutkin case potentially impacting Donald Trump’s campaign, asserting that Trump has no right to critique the charges, potential jury bias, or administration officials including Joe Biden. The request, meaning Trump should not discuss prosecutorial abuses against him considered as a major campaign issue, is seen as chilling and questionable.
Transcript
And unless you’re folks like Judicial Watch or people who are following this closely online, you may miss some of the abuses that are taking place and some of the legal back and forth that’s taking place. Now, remember, he’s got four well, excuse me. Yeah, he’s got four cases, right? He’s got this New York case by Alvin Bragg. He’s got the Fanny Willis case in Georgia related to retaliating against him for opposing the election.
He’s got the Sham case related to his presidential records that was brought by Joe Biden’s appointee through Merrick Garland, jack Smith down in Miami or Florida. And then he has the case up here in Washington, DC. Before Judge Chutkin, which relates to his, again, his efforts to dispute the January not the January, the election of 2020. And Joe Biden’s people in the Justice Department want to put him in jail for disputing Joe Biden’s election.
Doesn’t that tell you there’s something wrong with that process? And he’s before an Obama appointee. Judge Chutkin, who is obviously no friend of Donald Trump. She gratuitously has, I think, for political reasons, based on her decision making here, set up his trial in that case for March of next year, just before the Super Tuesday primary. So right in the middle of the elections, a federal judge accepted the Biden Justice Department’s corrupt invitation to intervene in the elections.
It’s just know, you get a judge that you think is against you and sometimes there’s nothing you can do. You just have to take it. But sometimes there’s a basis to ask the judge to recuse himself, in this case herself, judge Chutkin and recusal motions. Lawyers don’t like to bring them unless there’s really good reason because judges don’t like them and they’re afraid they’re going know, get negative blowback in other ways from the judge.
But President Trump had a significant basis to ask for Judge Chutchkin’s refusal. And I’m going to read you a little bit of the brief he filed because no one else is going to read it to you or show it to you. And I tweeted a little bit about it. And this is the brief he filed. I think it was when did he file this? It was last week, September 11.
Judge Chutkin has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Such statements made before this case began and without due process are inherently disqualifying. Although Judge Chutkin may genuinely intend to give President Trump a fair trial and may believe that she can do so, her public statements unavoidably taint these proceedings. Regardless of the outcome, the public will reasonably and understandably question whether Judge Chunkkin arrived at all of her decisions in this matter impartially or in fulfillment of her prior negative statements regarding President Trump.
Under these circumstances, the law and the overwhelming public interest in the integrity of this historic proceeding requires recusal. In October 2022, before the Special Counsel’s appointment or the filing of this case, judge Chutkins stated this was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally lawfully, peacefully elected government, by individuals who were mad that their guy lost. I see the videotapes. I see the footage of the flags and the signs that people were carrying and the hats they were wearing and the garb and the people who mobbed that capitol she’s talking about January 6.
Here, obviously were there in fealty, in loyalty to one man, not to the constitution of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant. Not to the ideals of this country and not to the principles of democracy. It’s a blind loyalty to one person, who, by the way, remains free to this day. And this is from a sentencing transcript of a January 6 defendant. President Trump’s lawyers go on to note the public meeting of this statement is inescapable.
President Trump is free, but should not be as an apparent prejudgment of guilt. These comments are disqualifying standing alone. However, this wasn’t the first time judge Chutkin expressed such an opinion. In December 2021. Judge Chunchkin similarly suggested that, in her view, president By Trump was responsible for the events of January 6, 2021, and should be prosecuted. He went to the Capitol. This is what she said. Because she’s talking about a January 6 defendant, just so you know, he went to the Capitol because despite election results, which were clear cut don’t get me started there.
Despite the fact that multiple court challenges all over the country had rejected every single one of the challenges to the election don’t get me started there. Mr. Palmer, who was defended, didn’t like the result. He didn’t like the result, and he didn’t want the transition of power to take place because his guy lost. And it is true. Mr. Palmer, you have made a very good point, one that has been made before, that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged.
That is not this court’s position. I don’t charge anybody. I don’t negotiate plea officers. I don’t make charging decisions. I sentence people who’ve pled guilty or have been convicted. The issue of who has not been charged is not before me. I don’t have any influence on that. I have my opinions, but they are not relevant. So you have a point that the people who may be, the people who planned this and funded it and encouraged it haven’t been charged, but that’s not a reason for you to get a lower reference.
He’s referencing Trump. Obviously, bemoaning it right. And this is what Trump’s lawyers say. Although Judge Chunkkin correctly noted that she does not have any influence on charging decisions, her above comments let me start over on that. I think I lost myself in making okay, I skipped the paragraph. That’s why I was confused. In making these statements, Judge Chutkin agreed with the portions of the defendant’s sentencing memorandum, which similarly and wrongly placed blame on President Trump and complained that he had not been charged.
This is what he said those voices, including the voice of the President himself, had convicted persons such as Mr. Palmer that the election was fraudulent, had convinced persons such as Mr. Palmer that the election was fraudulent, that they must take action to stop the transition of the presidency. While many of the people who were participating in the Capitol riot will be going to prison, the architects of that horrific event will likely never be charged with any criminal offenses.
Although Judge Chutkin correctly noted that she does not have any influence on charging decisions, her above comments stating, you have made a very good point that the people who exhorted you, encouraged you, and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged. And you have a point that the people who may be the people who planned this and funded and encouraged it haven’t been charged, but that’s not the reason for you to get a lower sentence.
Reflect her. All of those, the Trump’s lawyers say, reflect her apparent opinion that President Trump’s conduct occurred and supports charges. Otherwise, she would not have characterized the point as very good. Similarly, Judge Chuckin’s statement that I have my opinion suggests that her view formed almost two years before the initiation of this matter, which is the charging of Trump. President Trump should be charged. Public statements of this sort excuse me.
Public statements of this sort create a perception of prejudgment incompatible with our justice system. In a case this widely watched of such monumental significance, the public must have the utmost confidence that the court will administer justice, neutrally and dispassionately. Judge Chutkin’s pre case statements undermine that confidence and therefore require disqualification. Now, I think that’s a pretty persuasive brief. Now, the challenge for President Trump is that Judge Kutchen in the end, makes the first call as to whether she recuses herself.
And I don’t recall knowing, if she refuses to recuse herself, whether they can immediately appeal that. But no matter. It’s a substantial question. It’s not a meritless request, because sometimes these recusals are just garbage, and that’s not the case here. I remember seeing that Chutkin thing, that Chuckin statement. I thought, well, that’s substantial. That she mentioned at the the what was the statement that I really found problematic.
It’s a blind loyalty to one person, who, by the way, remains free to this day. I mean, she’s obviously complaining about Trump not being charged. Now, given those statements, do you trust Judge Chutkin to fairly administer that case? Is it reasonable to question her bias? I think so. And the Justice Department’s reactions in the briefs have been weak. They suggest that the judge can make statements like this? If there were proceedings that she was responding to before her and didn’t necessarily preclude her, they weren’t the type of bias that is improper.
And there was nothing in the proceedings before her that required her to make these gratuitous statements that she wishes Trump had been charged and that the defendant before her was right. People should have been charged. And that’s not fair. It’s a good point. There you have it. The other thing the Justice Department is doing in this judge Shutkin case. So by the way, this is the case, right? This is the most important case, practically speaking, because it’s the one that’s likely to come to trial first.
And obviously it could result in negative consequences for President Trump if it goes south. The Justice Department, the Biden Justice Department, through Jack Smith, the so called Special Counsel, who, as I have highlighted, is engaged in myriad examples of prosecutorial abuse, which I saw firsthand when I testified before the grand jury. His people, he or his people are asking for a gag order that would essentially shut down the Trump campaign.
And they’re pretending that Trump has no right to complain about these abuses, complain about this prosecution, complain about the likelihood of a jury being biased here in the District of Columbia, complain about Joe Biden, complain about the judge and defend himself in the middle of a campaign from a prosecution brought by the administration of his opponent. And the Justice Department is essentially asking Judge Chutkin to tell Trump he can’t say a thing not only about this case, but about anyone else associated with this case, which could be anyone ranging from Vice President Pence or the former Vice President who’s running against him, to Joe Biden.
So right now the official position of the Biden Justice Department is that Donald Trump should not talk about the number one campaign issue, or I would say one of the top campaign issues in the least he’s facing, which is these outrageous prosecutions of him. And I don’t know what Judge Chuchen’s going to do here. I don’t know what the courts are going to do. But even filing the brief is chilling, right? Because President Trump and his people around him must be know what? Can we even say anything now, given the fact Judge Chutkin is considering this now, the Biden administration is pretending that they’re taking this January 6 line criticizing Biden and Smith makes him responsible for people who improperly threaten them subsequently.
That’s not fair. It’s not true. And legally, it’s outrageous. So you can’t criticize Biden because someone who doesn’t like Biden goes and does something he’s not supposed to in terms of threats. And so, you know, Jack Smith is using as an excuse to keep the names of those who are working for him on this unprecedented prosecution away from the American people pretending there’s a security issue when there is no security issue.
Public officials, unfortunately, are often face, especially the more prominent they become and the more controversial their decisions, unfortunately, face. Threats that are illegal and intimidation, which can be illegal and troubling, and no one supports that. But, I mean, the idea that we somehow have them all masked right from the American people, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. So that’s where we stand on the awful Trump prosecution.
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