The federal judge assigned on Tuesday to hear Donald Trump‘s lawsuit against the House Select Committee on January 6 has a history of harsh words and harsh sentencing for people involved in the Capitol attack.
She denounced the rioters as a ‘violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government’ during the sentencing hearing of one participant, Matthew Mazzocco, who she sentenced to 45 days in jail despite prosecutors not recommending any incarceration.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan was handed the case at random a day after Trump filed the suit in a bid to block the release of records to the Democrat-led committee. The case is expected to test the limits of executive privilege.
Overseeing the potentially landmark case is a 59-year-old Washington, DC judge who was appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.
Public records show she donated around $2,200 to Obama in 2008, when she was a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner.
Already Chutkan is known for handing down sentences of at least 14 days for Capitol riot defendants who’ve entered her courtroom.
During the sentencing hearing of Capitol rioter Mazzocco, she condemned the Trump supporters as a ‘very real danger’ to democracy, CNN reported.
Prosecutors recommended home confinement for Mazzocco’s misdemeanor charge but Chutkan reportedly disagreed.
US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan (left, pictured attending Antonin Scalia’s memorial) was randomly assigned Donald Trump’s lawsuit (pictured leaving Trump Tower on Oct. 18)
‘There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home,’ she said in court.
Chutkan said the rioters had ‘soiled and defaced the halls of the Capitol.’
She went after Trump directly when she said Mazzocco didn’t go to the Capitol on January 6 ‘out of any love for our country.’
‘He went for one man,’ the judge said.
She also slammed comparisons to earlier Black Lives Matter protests in DC.
‘To compare the actions of people around the country protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and downplays the very real danger that the crowd on January 6 posed to our democracy.’ Chutkan said.
An earlier case of Chutkan’s made headlines in 2019 when she sentenced Russian spy Maria Butina to 18 months in prison for conspiring to infiltrate the National Rifle Association.
That sentence was in line with the government’s recommendation.
In his lawsuit filed on Monday Trump panned the bipartisan January 6 committee’s quest for information as ‘harassment.’
He said their request for documents was ‘illegal, unfounded and overbroad.’
‘The Committee’s request amounts to nothing less than a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition openly endorsed by Biden and designed to unconstitutionally investigate President Trump and his administration,’ the lawsuit read.
The committee, led by Democrat Chair Rep. Bennie…
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