Judge Chutkan understands an ounce of prison protects a pound of democracy

Trump didn’t appear before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan today when he pleaded not guilty to charges related to his coup attempt, but she is definitely one reason his attorneys would want a change of venue.

The federal judge assigned to the election fraud case against former President Donald Trump has stood out as one of the toughest punishers of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack fueled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. She has also ruled against him before.

Request to keep Congress from seeing records related to his riot? Denied!

Chutkan also understands the importance of introducing fascist thuglings to the FO side of the Fuck Around/Find Out equation.

Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors. Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.

Chutkan has said prison can be a powerful deterrent against the threat of another insurrection.

“Every day we’re hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024,” she said in December 2021 before sentencing a Florida man who attacked police officers to more than five years behind bars. At the time, that sentence was the longest for a Jan. 6 case.

“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,” she said.

Yes. The lesson they would take from leniency is that the commie libwimps don’t dare touch them. Some of these dipshits were caught because they bragged about breaking into the U.S. Capitol. Plus, it is safe to assume that many defendants couldn’t hide their outrage that a woman who is also one of Those People was allowed to judge them.

And Chutkan has no patience with the right’s bad faith whutaboutism.

Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee, suggested during a hearing in 2021 that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared with the people arrested during racial injustice protests following George Floyd’s 2020 murder.

Without naming her colleague, Chutkan criticized McFadden’s suggestion days later.

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said during an October 2021 hearing.

“But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

Related – here are the conditions of his release.

Windom said the Justice Department was not seeking the former president’s detention. The conditions of release, Windom said, are that Trump must not violate federal, state or local law while on release and that he “shall not communicate about facts of the case with any individual known to be a witness, except with counsel or the presence of counsel.”

Judge Upadhyaya said the most important condition of release is not committing any new crimes while on release, which could lead to him being detained and could add to the sentence he may eventually face. She told Trump that it is a crime to “influence a juror or try to threaten or bribe a witness or retaliate against anyone” connected to the case. Trump said he understands.

I’m not holding my breath for his big fucking mouth to land him in prison, but it could happen. His next scheduled court appearance – for this case – is August 28.

People who post off-topic comments lick Trevor McFadden’s loafers.