Biased Judge Bends the Rules to Hurt Trump on Jan 6th Case

While the trial stages of the many lawfare cases against Trump are on hold for the moment, some of the cases are still quite active in terms of appeals or pre-trial motions.

One of the most active has been the January 6^th case against Trump in the DC Federal District Court. The prosecutor is the hyper-partisan Jack Smith (who may have been illegally appointed; that matter is still an open issue) and the blatantly biased Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee.

This case had previously made it to the U.S. Supreme Court where the Justices ruled 6-3 in Trump v. United States (2024) that a president has absolute immunity for criminal acts committed in the course of “core” duties, presumptive immunity in the course of acts committed in non-core but still official duties, and no immunity for acts committed outside any official role of the president. The Supreme Court then remanded the case to the District Court for further proceedings on whether the alleged acts of Donald Trump around the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot were core duties, non-core duties or outside the scope of official duties.

The original complaint was clearly focused on core duties in the belief that the president had no immunity. This meant that Smith had to rewrite the complaint in order to allege criminal liability under the Trump case. It was at this point that Judge Chutkan ran off the rails in trying to nail Trump.

She let Smith unveil his revised complaint ahead of the defense. That’s highly unusual; the defense typically goes first under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Then she unsealed the prosecutor’s revised complaint. That was completely unnecessary. She could have kept it sealed at least until the defense brief was submitted. Letting the prosecution go first and making the complaint public amounted to holding a trial of Trump without the benefit of a defense.

Of course, this was all done with a political motive. The idea was to hurt Trump before the election even if the trial will not actually be held until after the election.

The good news is that even the prosecutor’s revised complaint is incredibly weak. Smith had to delete a lot of material because it fell squarely in Trump’s core duties to which immunity attaches. He was left with a made-up story about Mike Pence’s personal safety and how Trump seemed glib when he learned the crowd was shouting, “Hang Mike Pence!” For that matter, those yelling “Hang Mike Pence” may have been the FBI undercover agents who were sprinkled among the crowd.

Other claims by Smith are equally weak. It’s hard to see how conversations involving the president and vice president can be anything but “core” duties even if they were comparing golf scores or sharing recipes.

Even if Trump is convicted in this case at the trial level, it’s ripe for reversal at the appellate level. The best outcome is for Trump to win the election and dismiss the entire case.

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