U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who gained prominence driving some of the failed lawfare cases against President Donald J. Trump prior to his reelection, is now presiding over a case involving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The lawsuit, filed by various Democrat-led states, seeks to prevent DOGE from obtaining access to government data.
Appointed in 2013 by President Barack Obama, Chutkan is a former employee of Trump-Russia hoax dossier firm Fusion GPS and originally Jamaican, from a family of “dangerous subversive agents.”
In 2021, Chutkan denied Trump’s claim of presidential immunity in his election interference case, which the Supreme Court later reversed. Her judgments against the January 6 defendants are also notable, as she issued unusually harsh sentences—sometimes going far beyond what prosecutors requested—and openly criticized Trump’s pardons for those involved, saying they could not “whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake [or] repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
The current case centers on Elon Musk’s DOGE and the extent of its data access and authority over federal employment decisions. Judge Chutkan’s history suggests she will likely be hostile to Trump’s administrative actions.
