Tanya Sue Chutkan, the US federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington D.C., is an Obama appointee and donor, as well as an especially vocal Black Lives Matter (BLM) apologist who has now presided over many of the harshest over-sentences handed to Jan. 6 protestors. Chutkan, a 61-year-old born in Jamaica, also persistently tried to stymie the Trump administration between 2017 and 2021. Her husband Peter Krauthamer is also an Obama appointee.
Chutkan has prosecuted 38 people involved in the January 6th protests so far, with 19 sentences that “exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations.” Her rhetoric against the protestors was no less subdued. She argued:
“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment.“
Chutkan has raged about the issue, claiming protesters, “soiled and defaced the halls of the Capitol and showed their contempt for the rule of law,” though her comments on Black Lives Matter were far more subdued. The D.C. judge called BLM rioters “people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights,” referring to the widespread chaos and destruction in the summer of 2020 as: “People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man.”
In 2017, Chutkan issued a restraining order against the Trump admin policy of prohibiting migrants from leaving detention facilities for abortions. She ruled immigration officials are required to transport migrants “promptly and without delay… to an abortion provider, in order to obtain any pregnancy or abortion-related medical care.”
The Obama judge also tried to block scheduled executions of rapists and murderers on death row, bizarrely arguing that allowing the executions would deprive the inmates of their ability to pursue challenges in the court.
