What to Know About Tanya Chutkan, the Judge Overseeing Trump’s 2020 Election Case

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in a file photo. (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts via AP)

Former President Donald Trump was indicted on Aug. 1 on multiple felony charges in connection with his alleged attempts to dispute the results of the 2020 election and the events of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S Capitol.

A grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith to investigate the former president and his allies’ alleged attempts to dispute the election results, charged Mr. Trump with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding—the certification of the electoral vote—and conspiracy against the rights of citizens.

The indictment (pdf) also lists six alleged unnamed co-conspirators, four of whom are attorneys. They reportedly include former New York City mayor and former attorney to Mr. Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the conservative lawyer and former dean at Chapman University School of Law, John Eastman, and former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell.

Among them is also a Department of Justice official, reportedly Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ civil attorney, another co-conspirator who assisted in “devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” and a political consultant whose identity remains unknown.

Prosecutors claim Mr. Trump knew his claims about winning the election were “false” but “repeated and widely disseminated them anyway” in order to “make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode public faith in the administration of elections.”

The indictment marks the third time in four months that the former U.S. president, who is making a run for the White House again in 2024, has been criminally charged.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, will preside over Mr. Trump’s case.

What to Know About Judge Chutkan

According to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia’s website, Judge Chutkan, 61, was appointed to the bench in 2014 and was one of the first public defenders appointed to the federal trial court in Washington.

Judge Chutkan was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from George Washington University and her juris doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she was also an associate editor of the Law Review and a legal writing fellow.

After graduating from law school, she worked in private practice for three years before joining the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, where she worked as a trial attorney and supervisor.

During her 11 years as a public defender, Judge Chutkan argued several appellate cases and tried over 30 cases, including multiple serious felony cases.

She then joined the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, where she specialized in litigation and white-collar criminal defense for 12 years, handling clients during matters that included antitrust class action lawsuits and complex state and federal litigation.

While Judge Chutkan was randomly appointed to oversee Mr. Trump’s latest case, she has worked on cases relating to the Jan. 6 breach before, often handing down harsh prison sentences to those involved, including in July 2022 when she handed down a more than five-year prison sentence to a 56-year-old Washington resident involved in the Jan. 6 breach.

That sentencing was three months longer than prosecutors had requested and the same length as Judge Chutkan gave to another Jan. 6 defendant, Robert Palmer, a Florida man who also pleaded guilty to assaulting police at the Capitol.

Protesters gather on the west front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

‘Presidents Are Not Kings’

In other cases regarding Jan. 6, Judge Chutkan has matched or exceeded the DOJ’s sentencing recommendation, handing down far stricter terms of imprisonment. So far, she has sentenced at least 38 people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 breach.

In November 2021, Judge Chutkan also rejected Mr. Trump’s attempts to block the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 from accessing hundreds of documents from his White House. Mr. Trump had claimed executive privilege.

Judge Chutkan wrote at the time that Mr. Trump’s arguments appear “to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity’ ... but presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”

She also denied Mr. Trump’s attempts to suspend a $10,000-a-day fine levied against him for contempt of court in relation to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s subpoena demanding he turn over any records relating to the business practices of his family company, the Trump Organization.

Ms. James had accused the Trump Organization of using fraudulent and misleading asset valuations on multiple properties to obtain economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions for years.

The judge has also ruled against Mr. Trump on multiple other issues.

According to the latest indictment against Mr. Trump, “despite having lost” the 2020 election, the former president “was determined to remain in power.”

Former President Donald Trump is accompanied by members of his legal team, Susan Necheles and Joe Tacopina, as he appears in court for an arraignment on charges stemming from his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, in New York City on April 4, 2023. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Indictment Details

“So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he actually won. These claims were false and the defendant knew they were false,” the indictment states.

Mr. Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, has said the latest charges against him are “fake” and branded the case against him a politically-motivated witch hunt.

“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner and leading by substantial margins,” the Trump campaign said in an Aug. 1 statement after the charges were bought against him.

“President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys,” the statement continued. “These un-American witch hunts will fail and President Trump will be re-elected to the White House so he can save our country from the abuse, incompetence, and corruption that is running through the veins of our Country at levels never seen before,” the campaign added.

Along with the latest indictment against him, Mr. Trump is also facing multiple other legal battles, including in relation to the DOJ’s classified documents case and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s claim that he falsified business records as part of an alleged “hush money” payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels when Mr. Trump was a presidential candidate in 2016.

The former president is also in an ongoing legal dispute with writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused the then-president of defaming her when he denied having raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996.

Additionally, Mr. Trump is being investigated by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia over his alleged attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results while he was president.

Mr. Trump has denied the claims made against him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.