As if trying to prove Donald Trump’s point that her bias against him should disqualify her from presiding over a criminal case against him, Judge Tanya Chutkan has imposed a limited gag order on the former president and current presidential candidate, forbidding him from further abominations of the prosecutor, court personnel, or likely witnesses. It is the second gag order issued against Trump in two weeks — Judge Arthur Engoron having imposed one in the ongoing New York State civil fraud trial after Trump claimed that the judge’s law clerk was the girlfriend of Chuck Schumer, the U.S. Senate’s top Democrat (and Trump nemesis).
Judge Chutkan is the Obama appointee to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., who is assigned to the 2020 election-tampering case brought by Jack Smith, the Biden Justice Department special counsel. Like a good Democrat, Chutkan has publicly adhered to the narrative that Trump directed the violence at the Capitol on January 6, even though he has never been charged with incitement or any other crime of violence — not because the Biden Justice Department hasn’t been trying, but because it lacks evidence. And consistent with this Democratic narrative, in imposing the limited gag order in an oral ruling from the bench on Monday, Chutkan accepted the prosecutors’ contention that Trump is “encouraging violence” by his publicly inveighing that, for example, the case is “rigged,” Smith is “deranged,” Chutkan is a “radical Obama hack,” and “if you go after me, I’m coming after you” — even though, again, Smith has not charged Trump, nor could he credibly, with incitement or obstruction of justice based on anything Trump has said or done.
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