US Judge Tanya Chatkan on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to recuse herself from presiding over his trial sessions in the federal lawsuit filed against him on charges of attempting to tamper with the results of the 2020 presidential elections, reaffirming her impartiality.
On September 11, the former president’s lawyers asked the federal judge to step down, explaining their request with comments she made while presiding over trial sessions for those accused of participating in the attack launched by supporters of the former president on the Capitol building in early 2021.
On January 6, 2021, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed Congress headquarters in an attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s victory for the presidency.
In the memorandum urging her to step down, the former Republican president’s lawyers said, “Judge Chatkan suggested, in connection with other lawsuits, that President Trump should be tried and imprisoned.”
But the judge responded to their request by saying that what she stated during the aforementioned hearings, especially regarding the fact that the participants in the attack on the Capitol building acted “out of blind loyalty to a person who, by the way, is still free today,” was only a realistic account of the response. The defendants asked the court for mercy.
She added that none of the statements she made in this context fell within the framework of “favoritism or deep hostility that would make issuing a fair ruling impossible,” which is the condition set by the Supreme Court to request the resignation of a judge from a case he is considering, stressing that judges must step down. It must remain exceptional.
Trump had previously accused Chatkan of having “hatred” for him, when she set the start of his trial on March 4, which angered his lawyer.
The lawyers said that their client, who is most likely to win the Republican nomination ticket for the presidential elections scheduled for the end of next year, is requesting that the trial begin in April 2026.
March 4, 2024, falls on a Monday, the eve of “Super Tuesday,” the day when Republican voters in a large number of states cast their votes in the party’s primary elections.
#judge #Capitol #storming #incident #rejects #Trumps #request #step
2023-09-28 02:01:20
