‘The Worst Trump Could’ve Got’: Lawyers Spill on His Jan. 6 Judge
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Lawyers who’ve defended clients before Tanya S. Chutkan, the judge assigned to Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case, have some advice for the former president and his attorneys: buckle up.
Far from the more indulgent Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, attorneys tell Rolling Stone that Chutkan is perhaps the toughest judge he could’ve gotten in the Washington, D.C., district court.
“It’s probably the worst draw for Trump. She’s the worst judge he could’ve gotten handed,” one attorney with experience representing a January 6 defendant tells Rolling Stone. “She’s pleasant, she’s nice, and she’s fair, but she’s a tough judge with these Jan. 6 cases.”
Chutkan’s record of tough sentences in Jan. 6 cases has driven Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham to make cartoonish pronouncements about the supposed bias against the former president. “The judge in this case hates Trump,” he told Fox News on Wednesday evening.
Rolling Stone spoke with attorneys who had represented defendants in Jan. 6 cases and asked their thoughts on what the former president and his attorneys could expect. Attorneys — some of whom asked to remain anonymous in the event they appear before Chutkan in court again — praised her fairness and politeness. But they also describe a judge who’s not afraid to hand down at times surprisingly stiff sentences in cases involving Jan. 6 rioters.
Chutkan, an immigrant from Jamaica, worked as both a trial attorney in private practice and a public defender in Washington, D.C., before she was appointed to the bench by President Obama in 2014. (She was confirmed 95-0, including support from a pre-MAGAfied Sen. Graham.)
Since 2021, like many Washington, D.C., District Court judges, Chutkan has overseen several cases related to the efforts to overturn the election. Most of them involve charges against individual rioters or involved Trump’s own effort to block the National Archives from transferring records to Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee (Chutkan sided with the committee).
Now, she’s overseeing the biggest Jan. 6 trial of all: Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump. Trump faces three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding in connection with his attempts to disrupt the count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. The appointment of Chutkan as a judge in the case could affect his legal team’s strategy to try to delay special counsel criminal cases until after a hoped-for election victory as lawyers say Chutkan tends to move faster on trials than Trump’s team would prefer.
Throughout the course of those trials, Chutkan has repeatedly voiced her disgust for the actions of rioters on Jan. 6. “Every single time that I see videotape or hear recordings of what happened that day, I am struck anew with both the horror of what was going on that day and how close we came — how close we came to not fulfilling one of the basic functions of our democracy, which is a peaceful transfer of power, which we lecture other governments all over the world on and we’re supposed to be an example of, and we were not that day,” Chutkan said during the trial of Christine Priola, a rioter who appeared smiling on the Senate floor on Jan. 6. (Chutkan sentenced Priola to 15 months in prison.)
Chutkan also criticized “those in high office in this country” who’ve claimed the rioters were just “visitors exercising their First Amendment rights.” The statement was an implicit rebuke of Republicans who have argued that rioters were merely “tourists” at the Capitol. But Trump and his attorneys have also relied on First Amendment arguments in defending him from lawsuits and criminal charges related to the insurrection, claiming that his efforts to incite the riot and disrupt the count of electoral votes were protected speech.
Lawyers with experience in her courtroom are quick to warn others not to underestimate Chutkan, who can be obliging on procedural matters and empathetic with defendants but firm when it comes to handing down sentences.
John R. Osgood represented Kasey Hopkins, a Kansas City, Kansas, contractor who marched from a Stop the Steal rally into the Capitol and Sen. Jeffrey Merkley’s office. Osgood thought Chutkan’s background as a public defender meant that his client had a better shot at avoiding prison and seeing his punishment limited to probation.
Osgood was wrong: “At first I thought well I’ll probably get a decent sentence. My client got four months,” he tells Rolling Stone.
“She was quite nice and polite. She let me do everything by Zoom. She granted a motion, an extension on time to report because of [my client’s] job. But she is of the opinion that these people need to go to prison,” he says.
In the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, Trump and his attorneys have sought to slow the trial down as much as possible in hopes of pushing it back after the election and, in Trump’s belief, his victory in the presidential race. But others who’ve argued before Chutkan say the case might move quicker than some expect.
“Judge Chutkan is an extremely competent judge who is fair to both sides in my experience. She is not swayed by partisan interests, public clamor, of fear of criticism,” says Charles R Haskell, an attorney who has represented Jan. 6 defendants in her courtroom. “I would expect the case to move quickly.”
One attorney who has tried Jan. 6 cases and other criminal cases before Chutkan offered blunt advice to the Trump legal team. “Be prepared.” Chutkan, in the attorney’s experience, can be “very fair” in sentencing but does not suffer fools gladly and sets high expectations for the counselors who appear before her.
But as Chutkan herself points out often in sentencing, “there’s always the danger of reducing a defendant to a series of calculations and numbers,” and the same is true of her experience in Jan. 6 cases. The judge herself is more complex than a handful of stiff sentences in insurrection cases, also showing moments of empathy, compassion, and humor.
In handing down sentences, Chutkan frequently takes pains to insist that she’s not sentencing defendants for their political beliefs, only their actions. “You could support the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever your political beliefs are,” Chutkan told Robert Scott Palmer, a Florida man convicted of assaulting police officers and sentenced to five years in prison for his actions on Jan. 6.
She frequently describes sentencing as “the hardest part of my job and the part I like the least.” “I see these cases and people on the outside who aren’t in the system see these cases and they are like, Oh, they are all traitors, lock them up. They are all drug dealers, lock them up. It’s not that simple. Everyone is complicated.”
Chutkan made those comments in February while sentencing Jeffrey Finley, a West Virginia member of the Proud Boys. And in that case, she demonstrated that, for her, contrition matters.
Chutkan sentenced Finley to 75 days in prison and allowed him to serve the sentence in West Virginia, “to be close to his home, his mother, and his community,” noting during the sentencing that he displayed “genuine remorse” for his actions.
Trump continues to insist the 2020 election was stolen and that he did nothing wrong. He has suggested he’ll pardon Jan. 6 rioters if he retakes the White House in 2024. And after the indictment came down on Tuesday, his campaign put out a statement comparing it to Nazi Germany.
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