Left: Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File). Right: Former President Donald Trump speaks at the South Dakota Republican Party Monumental Leaders rally Friday, Sept. 8, 2023, in Rapid City, S.D. (AP Photo/Toby Brusseau)
Over a cutting 20-page rebuke, prosecutors working under special counsel Jack Smith responded late Thursday to former President Donald Trump’s longshot bid to have the judge presiding over his election interference case in Washington, D.C., recused.
Trump, who filed the almost certainly doomed motion last week, was unable to prove any instance of bias or “inherently disqualifying” statements made by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that rose to a level to prompt her recusal, prosecutors argued. Trump, through attorneys John Lauro and Todd Blanche, alleged Chutkan had demonstrated these prejudices in sentencings of other Jan. 6-related defendants. But in Thursday night’s sharp reply, the assertion was roundly criticized by the government, with prosecutors writing that Trump “cherry picking” routine exchanges between a judge and defendant — and his lack of proper contextualization — incorrectly cast the court’s typical processes in a “sinister” light and in large part to his “hypersensitive, cynical and suspicious” approach,
“Because the defendant’s motion fails to establish any bias by the court, much less the deep-seated antagonism required for recusal, the court has a duty to continue in this proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.
At issue for Trump were comments Chutkan — who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate unanimously in 2014 — made in December 2021 and October 2022 when sentencing Jan. 6 rioters Robert Palmer and Christine Priola. Lauro and Blanche argue that her comments when sentencing Palmer suggested she believed that those who planned the events of Jan. 6, not merely those who participated in the riot, should be charged as well.
Specifically, the defense pointed to a moment at Palmer’s sentencing when Chutkan told him:
“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 offers. I don’t make charging decisions. I sentence people who have pleaded guilty or have been convicted. The issue of who has or 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.”
She also said: “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 sentence.”
Where Trump claims this reeks of prejudice, prosecutors argued Thursday it is in fact her official duty and obligation under well-established precedent to address or discuss details of a defendant’s case and in this matter, when the defendant before her is attempting to “minimize their actions and spread blame to others, including to defendant Trump and to the mob that each rioter joined at the Capitol,” prosecutors wrote, it has been necessary for the judge to distinguish that person’s actions from the former president’s and inform them that his conduct has little bearing on their individual accountability.
Palmer’s defense relied on his blame of Trump: his attorneys argued he went to the Capitol at Trump’s “behest” and that he needed to “take action” because he believed Trump’s claim that the election was fraudulent.
To that point, in both the Oath Keeper and Proud Boys seditious conspiracy cases, U.S. District Judges Amit Mehta and Tim Kelly alike opined on Trump’s culpability in the context of the defendants’ arguments and how it did or did not factor into their cases. Though the judges, who were appointed by Barack Obama and Trump respectively, at times each suggested how they could understand why defendants may argue they were “swept up” or “taken in” by Trump’s tales of election fraud, it was a commentary they found unpersuasive and in large part irrelevant to their specific conduct.
In that same vein, Judge Amy Berman Jackson also discussed matters involving Trump in the course of normal Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Rodriguez, that he had been radicalized by Trump’s “knowingly false claims that the election was stolen.”
Trump’s motion is ineffective, the special counsel contends, because it has “no basis” and relies on “inference and innuendo [that] fatally undercuts” those claims of prejudice.
In Washington, D.C., Trump has pleaded not guilty to multiple felony counts including three charges of conspiracy related to attempts to defraud the U.S., to obstruct an official proceeding, and to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any state, territory, commonwealth, possession, or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” The Justice Department also indicted Trump on a fourth count: obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.
His trial before Judge Chutkan is currently slated for March 4, 2024. So far, the judge has mostly sided with Trump in his early motions. In August, when prosecutors met with defense attorneys before her to hash out limits on the sharing of pretrial evidence, Chutkan rejected many of the special counsel’s requests that would sharply limit what Trump could or could not say in the run-up to proceedings.
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